The Human League, Glasgow review: 'the classics galvanised the crowd'

The Human League | Getty Images

The Human League, Hydro, Glasgow ★★★★

As practised as their thanks to the audience are, The Human League always appear genuinely appreciative of the longevity of their career. Phil Oakey will be hitting his half-century in electro pop in a couple of years and his fellow singers Joanne Catherall and Susan Sulley, two school friends initially recruited from a Sheffield dancefloor, have extrapolated their enthusiasm across 45 infectious years.

Two key ingredients have remained constant: the songs and the style. The former range from the cheesy to the undeniable, while the latter is where the Human League really come out to play, with Sulley’s Strictly-meets-Barbarella chic worthy of a star in its own right. Oakey, meanwhile, manifested as a bondage Bond villain and indulged in more costume changes than his bandmates put together.

Their 90-minute set hit (nearly) all the spots you might expect, with three backing musicians recreating the Eighties synth aesthetic in laboratory conditions across a show which was true to the many moods of the Human League from the early doomy synthquake of The Path Of Least Resistance and the chanty earworm Empire State Human to the maudlin Louise and overwrought The Lebanon.

There were a couple of unexpected picks along the way including a strong cover of the Michael Jackson version of Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Behind the Mask and the bubblegum futurism of obscure single Soundtrack to a Generation, but nothing galvanised the crowd quite like the songs from their classic album Dare.

These included the urgent Sound of the Crowd, worthy of its double keytar action, the melodramatic Open Your Heart, with pointy poses timed to hit the piercing synth hook, and Don't You Want Me, the acme of early Eighties synth pop, or the encore of Oakey’s beloved Giorgio Moroder collaboration, the intrinsically joyful Together In Electric Dreams.