[Report] Orchestral Manoeuvre in the Dark in Warsaw

In the wake of their 13th album and just before their visit to the Bataclan, the Liverpool band passed through the Polish capital. Having followed Depeche Mode, Duran Duran and New Order in the competition for the best new wave band in the 80s, the group fell for a lot of minds into oblivion. Wrong.

Post punk and " Enola Gay"

If some are jubilant listening to their first albums, a more electro version of Joy Division, with gothic synth tablecloths in it, others will be just as happy to listen to their 80s hits that are the joy of retro evenings. When the electro-dark "Almost", released in 1980 in the eponymous album, will melt with gothic melancholy the fan of the Cure or the most confidential of Sad Lovers and Giant, " Enola Gay" has its place in a retro top of TF1 with Arthur. It's a rather wide mix, and at the Warsaw Progresja, they understood it well. If indeed the carefree and party-loving fan will waddle to the sound of the aforementioned hit or make a slow to the sound of " Souvenir ", the most pessimistic and romantic will appreciate the few twilight tracks of their debut. As for the one who does not really know where to give his mind torn between spleen and ideal, a good little "Electricity" to put everyone on the same wire (electric) was the most representative title of their career.

"Don't worry, it's just pop to the con"

But that's not all. Because of their approaching sixties, the two original friends that are Paul Humphreys and Andy McCluskey have not ceased to transmit their old communicative complicity, based on kitsch winks, crooner attitudes or sarcastic jokes. In full posture of distance from the music industry, like a kind of nic. This industry, which according to the interview given to Gonzaï made them live misery, put them at the boot of the majors, unlike Depeche Mode, always masters of their creations. This February 11, 2018, it is a good-natured audience, rather quadra than millennial, who came to have fun with the waddling chorus of "Pandora's box" for example. Having nothing more to lose and not taking himself seriously, the casual fan will be pleasantly surprised by the posture of unpretentious showman, mixing eccentricity and kitsch assumed. When it is not the self-mockery that punctuates the intertitles: before singing a song in the techno colors of their latest album, Andy warns not to worry about their "pop sound to the con", admitting to have pacted with Hollywood after a few albums to "make fucking money". All taking on a rather ambivalent meaning when you know that they were still broke after their world tours in the 80s. In short, the Warsaw public could forget the winter greyness in these electro-pop glitter, which, it is true, leaned more towards the facilities of the top 50 than in their kraftwerkian finds of their beginnings.

Album "Luxury Of Punishment"

Text and photos: Piotr Grudzinski

WCO is currently on a European and world tour