Gig review: OMD

OMDGLASGOW ROYAL CONCERT HALL ***

OMD have returned to deliver yesterday's sound of the future once again. From the consistently ecstatic response of this audience, I have to conclude that this reunion malarkey is going pretty well for them. Even the obligatory new material was entirely redolent of a 1980s episode of Top Of The Pops.

The pick of their back catalogue remains the doe-eyed Souvenir and, delivered in swift succession, Joan Of Arc and Maid Of Orleans, their classic diptych of swirling synth spookery. The former was accompanied by a terrace-style clapalong from the crowd (gotta show the love for your 15th-century Catholic martyrs) and the latter, with its ominous let's-see-what-happens-when-I-hit-this-button intro, drew a suitably devotional response.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

If Florence Welch has not already covered this hokey but atmospheric track, it is surely only a matter of time.

But with these early epics out of the way, they had more or less played their hand and the rest of the set was a procession of mere footnotes such as Locomotion and Talking Loud And Clear.

Paul Humphries took the lead on (Forever) Live & Die, a reedy boy band ballad coated in an electro pop veneer, and gained a pair of projectile panties for his pains.

Andy McCluskey, meanwhile, was the champion of the male contingent of the audience. His unique, abandoned and in some ways admirable style of inept interpretative dancing provided a hall full of blokes who had been on their feet from the start of the gig anyway with all the license they needed to join him in an orgy of poor co-ordination, questionable rhythm and embarrassing moves delivered with a pure, unfettered enjoyment which was both disarming and slightly disturbing to behold, especially as an accompaniment to Enola Gay, the catchiest song ever about impending nuclear holocaust.