THE BEAT GOES ON
NEW YORK—Think a minute, and recall the members of the Electronics Club at your school. If stereotypes haven’t been swept under the carpet in this supposedly liberated land, the composite you’ve created is probably male, unathletic, either scrawny or chunky, awkwardly dressed, complete with bulging toolbox, and cursed with vision correctable only with Coke bottle lenses.
THE BEAT GOES ON
OMD: Pilgrims' Unplanned Progress
NEW YORK—Think a minute, and recall the members of the Electronics Club at your school. If stereotypes haven’t been swept under the carpet in this supposedly liberated land, the composite you’ve created is probably male, unathletic, either scrawny or chunky, awkwardly dressed, complete with bulging toolbox, and cursed with vision correctable only with Coke bottle lenses. For years, the tinkering types, loners all, were assumed to be so introspective and unappealing that calling them “spuds” would be taken for a compliment.
So give a look and listen to the 22-year-old pair who are Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark—Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys—and begin to reassess that portrait of wire wizards. Friends and collaborators since their mid-teens, McClusky and Humphreys contrast well with each other, both physically and in performance. Andy is a dark-haired broody type who, attached to his bass, leaps about the stage as if he’s been hot-wired. His expenditure of voltage enlivens and gives emotional weight to O.M.D.’s attractive tunes, such as their keyboard-based British Top 10’s, “Electricity,” “Enola Gay” and “Souvenirs.”