Significant Human Impact

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark are really on a roll. Fourteenth album Bauhaus Staircase, released in October 2023, hit #2 in the UK album chart providing their biggest chart placing since The Best Of O.M.D. in 1988 and beating Architecture And Morality (1981) and Sugar Tax (1991), both of which peaked at #3. Even if Bauhaus Staircase proves to be the final O.M.D. album, as Andy McCluskey has stated in interviews, not a bad achievement for a band going since 1978.

Bauhaus Staircase would have made my end of year countdown, other than I didn't get my hands on it until the festive period, with repeated plays into the New Year. It's a great album, very much in step with their 21st Century releases, History Of Modern (2010), English Electric (2013) and The Punishment Of Luxury (2017), and an invigorating listen from start to finish. 

There have been three four singles from the album, Anthropocene being the most recent. The title refers to the term sometimes used to simply describe the 'current' geological period of significant human impact on the planet. Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys have also released short 'song breakdown' videos, including one for this track.

Veruschka was originally a Paul Humphreys idea for the aborted second OneTwo, circa 2013. It resurfaced during the Bauhaus Staircase writing sessions and, after a Google search on the name, Andy was inspired to write a "film-noir ballad".

 

Slow Train is a brooding, pulsating glam electro stomp that immediately calls to mind Ooh La La by Goldfrapp. Andy took inspiration from songwriter Katrīna Kaņepe, who also provides signature backing vocals, to develop the scat lyrics into...well, it's still essentially a repeating verse with lots of Na Nas, Yeah Yeahs and Hoo Hoos, but it's also as catchy as hell.

 

The title track of Bauhaus Staircase was released last August and I enthused about it as great length at the time. It still hits the mark, nearly six months on.

 

But technically, it wasn't the first single after all. Don't Go was originally released in 2019 to promote the Souvenir singles compilation and box set and it's made it as track 2, side 2 on Bauhaus Staircase. If the song were a stick of seaside rock, it would have "classic O.M.D." written all the way through.

 

Mrs. K and I are seeing O.M.D. live in concert in just under two months' time. First time for Mrs. K, third for me and back at the venue where I saw O.M.D. first in 1986. I'm looking forward to the wave of feelgood from hearing them perform and I'm hoping that plenty of songs from Bauhaus Staircase get an airing, it's really that good.