Similar to my
experience with Fehlfarben,
one of my first reviews on this blog was of my
favorite album by The Human League, Travelogue
(Dare comes second!),
and it took until now for me to finally get a chance to see them
live. Of course, the band that recorded Travelogue
only shares one member with the current lineup, but it still seemed
worth a shot.
Artist: The Human
League
Venue: Huxleys Neue
Welt
Location: Berlin,
Germany
Date: 12 November 2018
Opening Act: Shelter
Setlist:
01. The Sound of the Crowd
01. The Sound of the Crowd
02. Sky
03. Heart Like a Wheel
04. Open Your Heart
05. Soundtrack to a
Generation
06. Seconds
07. The Lebanon
08. One Man in My Heart
09. Louise
10. Human
11. Behind the Mask
[Yellow Magic Orchestra cover]
12. Love Action (I
Believe in Love)
13. All I Ever Wanted
14. Mirror Man
15. Tell Me When
16. (Keep Feeling)
Fascination
17. Don't You Want Me
Encore:
18. Being Boiled
19. Together in
Electric Dreams [Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder song]
When I read that the
opening band was Shelter, I
was expecting the American Krishnacore band. It seemed like a strange
combination, but you never
know with these things. When
I showed up, I was instead presented with a British electronic pop
duo featuring a singer that
addressed the crowd in fluent German. I liked the queer vibes I got
from them, but that was
about it. The songs sounded like they were written by stealing one
bit of a song by New
Order, Gary
Numan, or Depeche
Mode, and then using that as the only hook. The lyrics were bland
and the music just made me wish for the real thing. The singer was
decent, but most of the music and backing vocals were programmed. I
kind of wished I'd seen the hardcore band instead.
The Human League
appeared as a six piece: original singer Philip Oakey, Dare-era
backing vocalists Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley, two keyboard
players (Nic
and Ben),
and Rob Barton on
electronic
drums.
Off
to the side of the stage was David
Beevers, their
sound engineer, who was important enough to receive an introduction
by Philip along with the others. Both keyboard players came onstage
with keytars, so clearly things were off to a good start.
[Two keytars!]
I
had no idea of what to expect from the concert. Unsurprisingly, they
played half of Dare
along with both subsequent non-album singles, all
of which were well done even if predictable.
Otherwise,
they played various singles from throughout their career, of which
some were markedly better than others. "One Man in My Heart"
was a welcome opportunity for Sulley to take the lead, but the song
itself was not a winner. "Behind the Mask", on the other
hand, was a compelling reminder of the band's collaboration with
Yellow Magic Orchestra.
"Don't
You Want Me" was naturally the closer of the main set, but the
instrumentalists led an extended intro with an opportunity for the
crowd to sing a round of the refrain before the singers came back on
stage. I was particularly curious what they would offer for an encore
after already playing their biggest hits. The answer was "Being
Boiled", the only song they played from the original incarnation
of the band. It's a weird song, but I still like it, and it was
markedly heavier than anything else they played. The
last song was "Together
in Electric Dreams", originally
a collaboration by Oakey and Giorgio
Moroder for the Electric
Dreams
soundtrack. Naturally, it fits right into the Human League mold, and
the crowd was into it.
From
what I could tell, almost everything was performed live.
One of the keyboardists even played a guitar for a couple of the
songs!
Oakey's
vocals were still quite strong, and while no one ever pretended that
Catherall
and Sulley were
virtuosos, their vocals were solid additions. I wish they'd been a
bit higher in the mix at times, though. While
the backstory of the women's addition to the band still sounds
bizarre today, I've got to hand it to them that they've stuck with
the band ever since they joined in 1980. It'd be a lot weirder if it
didn't work.
The
band clearly tries
to fight the notion of being a boring synth band just standing
statically behind their rigs. Oakey kept active and ran all over the
stage. Catherall
and Sulley were
both in constant motion, swaying and dancing on the sides. (All three
also had a few costume changes throughout the night.) The drumkit
and keytars also helped with the movement on stage. And true to
tradition, they
had a massive array of video screens. The visuals were sometimes bits
of their music videos but often just weird pseudo-sci-fi imagery or
scenes from old video games (e.g. Pac-Man)
and movies (e.g. Tron).
The weirdest was for "Together
in Electric Dreams":
[Are those mechanical sheep with telephones for heads?]
Despite the many things
the band did right, there was still something missing from the show.
Although they did their best to keep the attention of the audience,
there was something a bit too easy, clean, and predictable about it
all. They leaned hard on the pop side of their catalog, but their
presentation lacked depth. I appreciate the politically charged
nature of some of their songs, but many were straightforward and
uncomplicated. It felt a bit too cheesy at times, like the audience
was being pandered to. Where were the experimental elements? The
willful weirdness? Obviously, I wanted more from Travelogue,
but that's not the last album in their career to feature
experimentation and exploration. I liked what I heard, but I was
hoping for more.
Scores:
Shelter: D
The Human League: C+
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