The popular music of the 1970s as OMD saw it had become senseless and overblown with uninventive guitar-work, mythological narratives (looking at you, prog-rock), and financial barriers to entry. Taking a detour from the typical source of lyrical inspiration, love, and human experience, OMD lifted their songs from engineering handbooks, historical stories, and wartime politics. Synthesizing intellectual lyrics with popular sensibilities, “Enola Gay” reflects bandmates Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys’ efforts to bring the cerebral and often, commonplace, into the mainstream. While the last 40 years have seen OMD produce multiple charting records, break into America with Pretty in Pink‘s “If You Leave”, and more recently, record the critically acclaimed The Punishment of Luxury, it’s “Enola Gay” that most honestly captures the band’s triumphant legacy. Newcomers to OMD should start with the fantastic concept album Dazzle Ships before coming around to this release, though.“Enola Gay”, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s (OMD’s) wonderfully indulgent synthpop classic named after the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, has just turned 40. After all, it’s one of those early British new wave albums that was able to break through to the rest of the world, thereby giving it the dubious distinction of being crowned a classic. They are the only two tracks where the experimentation goes in the wrong direction.Ĭo-produced by Mike Howlett, Organisation is far from perfect but is worth a listen.
Meanwhile, the sludgy vocal on “The More I See You” is also slowed to a snail’s pace and its percolating music simply does not match, making it a song that would be more at home on a Beta Band album. Its repetitive melody, hypnotic as it is, leans toward the monotonous and oppressive side. The only sub-par tracks are “VCLXI” and “The More I See You.” The former is in desperate need of a lyric sheet because the vocal is so distorted that the words are practically indecipherable. It certainly helps to end the album as strongly as “Enola Gay” began it. If I were to create my own soap opera, “Stanlow” would be playing over the opening credits. The album’s closer, “Stanlow” (a British oil refinery), is a grand, sweeping epic of a track that comes complete with factory noises and multi-part instrumental passages. In addition, “Motion And Heart” is a finger-snappingly strong jazz number and “The Misunderstanding” is tortured Goth rock at its warped finest. Tunes like “2nd Thought” and “Promise” could very easily have been hits with their whistling, slightly off-kilter keyboards and a repetitive, steady bass line.
However, the rest of Organisation sounds absolutely nothing like the song, but this is not a bad thing. Along with Ultravox’s “Vienna,” it was one of the very first synth-pop hits that is still popular as a cult classic dubbed a song of the future upon release, it still has that sound. “Enola Gay” is arguably OMD’s best song ever, sounding a bit like the Twilight Zone theme set to a shuffle beat.
Yet this is one of those bands that delivers both commercial and critical hits. Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys selected Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark simply because it was the most pretentious and preposterous name they could come up with - and on that level, they succeeded. Giorgio Moroder and a multitude of disco artists would assist the genre for the remainder of the decade, until the likes of The Human League, Ultravox and OMD took over. The history of synth-pop can be traced back to German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk in the mid-70s. The rest is a subdued affair, to say the least, so its no wonder that Organisation would end up being one of the more forgotten albums in OMD’s ten-album catalog.īut this attitude and the primitive-sounding synths give each song texture and character and make it a forgotten classic. Only the lead-off song “Enola Gay” became a single and is the sole upbeat track to be found among the nine songs. Instead of building on the success of their debut, the duo instead chose to restrain themselves even more. Their second album, Organisation, is perhaps most representative of this kind of approach.
While most artists chose to roar their way into the 1980s, OMD quietly slipped through the back door.