The tunes convey a poise and grace that their sixtysomething composers sometimes can’t quite match.
It’s a solid base, yielding invigoratingly bleepy post-punk nuggets Electricity, Messages and, for the first time in 38 years, anxious closer Pretending To See The Future. British synth-pop pioneers, they graced the early 1980s with gleaming, yearning electronic music, like a Kraftwerk from the Wirral.īut where comparable acts ascended to superstar status, OMD ebbed away before emerging as hitmakers for Atomic Kitten.īut now they’re playing the first of two nights in a crowded Royal Albert Hall, with the 1980s eponymous debut album as a focal point. Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark always did somehow struggle to be cool, though they got the hard stuff right. Co-founder Paul Humphreys (above left with Andy McClusky), mostly stationed smilingly at back-right, claims the stage to deliver a cheery (Forever) Live And Die
