Famed sociologist Sherry Turkle once said, “Boredom is your imagination calling to you.” And while it’s unclear if Andrew McCluskey of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) ever heard this quote, ennui was definitely the driving force behind 2023’s “Bauhaus Staircase,” OMD’s most recent and likely final studio album.
For McCluskey, who is one-half of the band alongside childhood friend Paul Humphreys, the forced downtime triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic was a major ingredient behind OMD hitting the studio for one more full-blown project.
Now the duo is out on tour and headed to the Greek Theatre for a two-night stay on June 20 and 21.
“We weren’t allowed to go out, so I equated it to when I was a teenager and we only had one TV in the house with three channels and my mother was probably watching ‘Kojak,’ so I’d end up going to my room to paint a picture or write a song,” he said with a laugh during an early April interview. “There was nothing else to do and it was a bit like those days. But you know what, the power of boredom can be very creative.”
With five or six songs percolating on his computer, McCluskey spent his time hammering out verses for songs like “Veruschka,” an atmospheric gem initially recorded for the unmade second album for Onetwo, Humphrey’s short-lived duo with Propaganda singer Claudia Brücken.
Elsewhere, the infectious “Kleptocracy” (which started out being called “When I Was Young”), finds OMD getting political amid gurgling synth washes while highlighting corrupt oligarchs swiping resources in Russia, the United States and Saudi Arabia.
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While McCluskey points out that a good chunk of time found “…Paul busy buying a house in France and making babies,” Humphreys did provide the seeds for a number of songs. Those include the futuristic-sounding Eurodisco classic “Anthropocene” (which refers to the current era in Earth’s evolution when mankind is directly affecting it) and “Look at You Now,” a perfect slice of wistful electro-pop.
While the relationship between McCluskey and Humphreys dates back to grade school, OMD split in 1989 when the latter left over creative differences. McCluskey soldiered on as a solo act under the OMD moniker before retiring the name in 1996. OMD was resurrected a decade later following a request from a German television show for the band to reunite.
OMD are stopping at The Greek Theatre June 20 and 21. (Courtesy of Ed Miles.)The two friends picked up at that point and have released four albums since, with the “Bauhaus Staircase” predecessor being 2017’s “The Punishment of Luxury,” which McCluskey was sure would be the final OMD studio album. And while COVID-19 changed that notion, the Liverpool native has no doubts that, barring another global pandemic, there will be no follow-up to the duo’s 2023 studio effort.
“Paul and I have said before the pandemic that ‘The Punishment of Luxury’ was probably the last studio album,” McCluskey explained. “It is increasingly hard to make a full album we think is up to the standard that we’d like it to be. After 46 years in the band, I love touring and if the mood is upon me, I love the idea of sitting down and trying something. But do I want to go and sit in my programming room without a pandemic forcing me there?
“Am I going to be able to mine my head, soul and heart to keep beating myself up to squeeze out the good stuff — especially after the last few albums have been so well-received? The last thing we want to do is have people say, ‘They’re such a cool band, but this new album sucks. I don’t want to see them play it live and I don’t want to listen to it.’”
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While the current tour kicked off last year, the band postponed dates due to McCluskey needing a knee replacement, as well as vocal cord surgery. OMD has subsequently played dates in Europe, the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. McCluskey said he was eager to tour the States, and based on those earlier dates, he’s happy to see how well audiences are receiving the new songs alongside OMD’s vintage material.
“This tour will feature ‘Bauhaus Staircase,’ but not exclusively,” he said. “We’re blessed to have a lot of songs people love to hear live. We would be stupid not to play our hits and all the things people love to hear. There will be a slice of ‘Bauhaus Staircase,’ but I don’t want people to be worried about it. What we’ve found over the recent years is that the new songs slot in really well to the set. You play a new song and you don’t see half the audience go to the bathroom, so that’s a good thing.”
When one asks McCluskey about OMD’s early roots, it really is a case of a square peg fitting in a round hole. The prog rock and the nascent punk scene was bubbling up at the time, McCluskey was a self-described “…pretentious young teenager, which is the best way to be.” His muses were “…Kraftwerk and Neu! from Germany, David Bowie, Brian Eno-era Roxy Music, The Velvet Underground and everything else was shite…”
After a brief attempt at playing a guitar gifted to him by his sister was abandoned, McCluskey pivoted to bass because the guitar strings hurt his fingers. The cheapest bass he could afford was a left-handed model at a pawn shop, so the right-handed musician learned to play it upside down, a practice which continues to this day.
When Humphreys showed up at his door to recruit McCluskey to play bass in a prog-rock band of classmates, the duo found they had more in common with each other than their classmates, and soon the duo were making strange music on devices Humphreys was building from scratch. An acquired keyboard and the chance to play at the Liverpool new wave space called Eric’s Club in 1978 opened the door for the duo to be “…two guys with a tape recorder playing songs that even our best friends think (are) weird.”
Eric’s Club had a reciprocal relationship with Manchester club Hacienda, where McCluskey and Humphreys, performing as OMD, crossed paths with Tony Wilson, who signed them to his label, Factory Records, and declared OMD was “…the future of pop music.” It was a bold statement that Humphreys and McCluskey didn’t necessarily embrace.
“The bottom line is we couldn’t believe he was talking about pop music because we thought we weren’t (making that),” McCluskey said.
“You look back now and listen to ‘Electricity’ and ‘Messages’ off the first album and of course it was electronic pop music. But there really wasn’t such a thing at the time. It was only a year later that Gary Numan came along and people like us and The Human League were like, ‘Where did he come from? We’ve been going before he started. How is he allowed to have a number one?’ Our crazy idea — 18 months later — was the new big pop sensation. Who knew? We didn’t.”
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD)
When: Friday, June 20, and Saturday, June 21 at 8:00 p.m.
Where: The Greek Theatre, 2700 N Vermont Ave., Los Angeles
Tickets: Starting at $41.30 via ticketmaster.com
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