I'm gonna kick down fascist art

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

03/11/23 : Bauhaus Staircase - OMD

Ooooh - this is a tricky one.  To Taylor or not to Taylor?  I appreciate (and admire) her reasons for re-recording all her old albums, I understand they feature new content and I also accept they are most definitely culturally significant.  But, I'm not sure any of that really means I need to re-review albums which I've met before by someone I really don't understand the fuss about.  I have listened to her version of 1989 (possibly not by choice) and found it fine I guess, but those tracks that I knew seemed to have taken a step backwards (and this was a view shared by the resident experts in the house) and I don't think I'd have anything more to say on it, so it get's skipped over.

Another factor which contributed to the decision to skip it was the album that was waiting in its place - I liked a bit of OMD back in the day and was very interested to see what they'd come up with a FEW years later...

And what they've come up with is a pretty good 80s OMD album - it fits in with their previous work very nicely, without obviously being the same old thing revisited.  They've taken it seriously, without taking themselves too seriously - they've got the balance right here for me.  It feels like it's got a pretty good quality bar throughout so I can't say any one track stood out for me, but some of the tracks towards the end particularly felt like they'd warrant another listen.  I'm not sure it will convert many people but if you're a fan of OMD or just the general 80s sound, then I feel there's plenty here for you.

We're at #2 in the charts with a new entry this week, their first charting album since - oh, Dazzle Ships in April this year.  The rest of the top five are Taylor (a new entry, of course), The Rolling Stones, Duran Duran (another new entry in 80s week!) and James Blunt (another new entry!) - and we have two more new entries in the top ten for Casisdead (#8) and Alfie Boe (#10).  It really is 80s week - two further new entries further down the chart are Simple Minds (#23) and Billy Bragg (#29) - I suspect I might have to do a further write-up on some of them later in the week.

Last week I said that The Rolling Stones would drop to #23 and, as we've already seen, I got that wrong, didn't I?  Fair play to the lads, but I'm surprised they've hung in so well.  OMD will not be hanging in quite so well but I think they might surprise a few people - I'm going for #34.  And this week's Taylor stats are the expectedly impressive one in the top one, five in the top twenty and ten in the entire chart - and that's the first time since I started checking that she's had all ten of her albums in there.

Wikipedia tells me that this is their fourteenth studio album (impressively for a group displaying such longevity, they've all been top thirty albums) and their first since 2017.  A lot of this was pulled together during Covid lockdown where, amusingly, Andy McCluskey "rediscovered the creative power of total bloody boredom".  Apparently, most of the album is about the state of politics - you get the impression that the album has something to say on first listen but it didn't come across as overly political to me.  I obviously knew that the album title is derived from the Oskar Schlemmer painting, Bauhaus Stairway, though - but every one knew that, right?  

The critics were very taken with the album with lots of people saying very nice things about it - and Brian Cox (the scientist, not the actor) declared it was what you'd get if "if Kraftwerk came from the Wirral" so thanks for that, Brian.  And as well as doing well over here, it's also made the top ten in Germany.

"Customers also listened to" Blancmange, The Human League, Ultravox and Heaven 17 - some fine names from back in the day, many of whom have toured recently or will be touring soon with various album anniversary tours.  But none of them can really claim to have the shown the longevity that OMD have and this album is an impressive showing - it's fresh, manages to look both forwards and backwards and is well worth a listen imho.

27/10/23 - Surprisingly bearable
10/11/23 - Remarkably average