Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Music Box: OMD

The timelessly romantic "So in Love" is my favorite song on Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's 1985 album, "Crush," whose Edward Hopper-inspired jacket remains my all-time favorite album cover. (I had a HUGE poster of it on my bedroom wall!) Like many great '80s bands led by men, OMD never got the full recognition they deserved from me. (No fun girl, no dice.) But even after all these years, few artists can stir up childhood memories in me like OMD does, from "If You Leave," their melodramatic soundtrack to the prom at the end of "Pretty in Pink," to older, more experimental gems like "Electricity," "Enola Gay," "Joan of Arc" and "Telegraph." Truth be told, OMD even furnished the soundtrack to another youthful era of my life. I still have a soft spot for some of the post-heyday material, like "Sailing on the Seven Seas" and "Pandora's Box (It's a Long, Long Way)," which was in heavy rotation during my years going dancing at Probe in Hollywood in the early '90s. 



Now talk about memories. ...




4 comments:

Unknown said...

Don't forget the pop gem Secret

Chad said...

I love OMD! Their greatest hits album was one of my all-time favorites in high school. I can remember listening to the tape on my Walkman for hours and hours.

nojarama said...

OMD is a gem. Other tracks that were/are still fabulous (besides the ones you mentioned): "Secret (especially the US Remix), "Tesla Girls", "Locomotion", "Talking Loud & Clear" (those 3 from their perfect album "Junk Culture" and "Dreaming". And BTW, both singers are extremely sweet and approachable. I met them at a record signing for the "Crush" album. Both were darlings! The other bandmates just kind of "were there", but all seemed quite nice.

Anonymous said...

Crush was pure genius. And I remember blasting that album Sugar Tax driving through the mountains of Vermont to meet my first boyfriend at another college when I was 21.

They performed at Wembley in December and have a new album coming out in 2010 called History of Modern (their first album since 2006.)

Here's a demo of the new single Single Marie Says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwiyXz1c-qc