TIM DE LISLE
The Human League Utilita Arena, Birmingham
Touring until Saturday )))))
In September the first two Human League albums were performed in full by their splinter group, the ever-classy Heaven 17. Phil Oakey of The Human League was invited but politely declined. Now you see why: he was planning something similar for his masterpiece, the band’s 1981 album Dare.
Forty years on, this synth-pop classic has lost none of its lustre. The bill includes two other Smash Hits icons, Tom Bailey of Thompson Twins (still punchy after all these years) and Clare Grogan of Altered Images (still sassy). Both get a standing ovation – no mean feat for support acts.
The Human League step up the visuals with a grand set design inspired by M.C. Escher. Dare gets top billing, and fully deserves it.
An album with hardly any album tracks, it was snappy enough to turn what had been a cult band into a phenomenon.
The synths now seem almost incidental: Love Action and
Open Your Heart are just great pop songs, laced with the intelligence that marks out music made in Sheffield.
At 66, Oakey has long since mislaid his lop-sided hair, but he retains the whiff of weirdness that pop stars need. It’s his party and he’ll come as Dr No if he wants to.
His stentorian vocals are balanced by the warmer tones of
Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall – the women who saved Oakey from being too blokey.
Dare was so radiofriendly that the biggest hit of all, Don’t You Want Me, was only its fourth and final single.
Helpfully for this show, it was also the last track on side two.
Purpose-built for
10,000 people to sing, it lives up to the name of the first single from the album: The Sound Of The Crowd.