It’s 1981. By now, my record collection is taking shape. I’ve got a great wee collection of crucial 7″ singles, not yet donated in shame because of a haranguing Bob Geldof. I’ve begun to dip a toe into the adult world of albums. The first non-compilation album I’d buy would be Kings Of The Wild Frontier. Actually, the first album I bought full stop was Kings Of The Wild Frontier. Albums, being pricier, are more of a risk. They require investment, both financially and emotionally and this 11-year old didn’t have the capacity for that. Three singles, one track that could’ve been a single and a bunch of filler. Ouch, £3.99 is a big deal. You expect payback. So now, I’ve gone for playing it safe. I’ve bought the Best Of Blondie. And Queen’s Greatest Hits. And The Beatles A Collection Of Oldies. There’s an old Rock ‘N Roll hits compilation in there too – which, if my maths is correct is no different to an 11-year old today running out to buy a compilation of hits from the early 2000s. Who on earth would want to do that?
As it turned out, Kings Of The World Frontier is far greater than the sum of the singles released from it. I suspect you knew that already though. The same can also be said for Architecture And Morality, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark‘s breakthrough album, although it took me right until today to work that one out too.
I loved those singles that came from it so much that I took the leap to ploughing my collection of coppers and silver into the album. There were two completely different songs that both referenced Joan Of Arc, which may have been some sort of band in-joke, but to Radio Clyde DJs and pre-teens like me was just plain confusing. And there was Souvenir.
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – Souvenir
Souvenir is masterful. Hooky, poppy and bathed in sorrow and melancholy, it drapes its wistful and hangdog, almost feminine vocal across a signature keyboard motif. Synth drums beat softly, a choir of overdubbed voices add depth to the refrain – my feelings still re-main – and it plays out for three and a half dejected yet uplifting minutes. This is the sound of sadness, to misquote Paul Simon. “Is this the Cocteau Twins?” asked the boy tonight as it was playing. Dream pop before such a term was conceived, you can kinda hear what he means too.
Built on a bed of slowed down looped choral vocals, Souvenir is so evocative – a great example of a pioneering synth band breaking new ground. Hindsight shows OMD to be a great, great singles band but it’s possibly fair to say that OMD never got the kudos they deserved at the time. Too arty for pop yet too pop for the arty crowd, they straddled this weird limbo ground, and Souvenir‘s parent album is a great example of this.
Housed in a die-cut Peter Saville sleeve, all dull industrial tones and brutalist architecture, the record’s grooves fizz and hiss and clank and clunk with the sound of machines whirring into action, ambient found sound and musique concrète. Amongst all of this sat the pop singles. It’s a strange thing to remember, but straight after buying it, I ran not to my room to play it, but instead put it on my dad’s record player downstairs. As I sat back to get into it, my mum came in and sat down and listened with me. (Go away mum. This is a personal ritual that can’t be shared).
Hisssss. Sccccratcchhh. Sccccrraaaape. Thud thud thud. Rattle rattle rattle. Echoey voices. Biscuit tin snare drums. Wonky production. It’s a sound that I now recognise to be that of an experimental synth band embracing the anything-goes spirit of post-punk and running with it in their own idiosyncratic direction.
“Did you waste your money on this rubbish?” my mum tutted, getting up and leaving. Instant shame.
I struggled into the second song. £3.99 for this!? Where were the singles? Ah….here comes Souvenir. And here comes my mum. “Dah dah dah-dah-dah-dah dah dah!” she sings, mimicking (wrongly) the keyboard refrain. Man! She’s ruined the hard to like stuff AND NOW she’s ruining the single too.
I can’t say I played the record more than once ever again.
Fast forward a couple of years. Alex Aitken has a new turntable, hi-spec and booming, and he has designs on my long-forgotten OMD record. And I, with hormones pinging, have designs on the cover of a Sheena Easton album that he’s been playing. Not the music. That’s extremely pish. Just the cover. Sheena is covered in some sort of robe, sitting with one leg up, a bit too much caramelled thigh on display, her full-bodied lips smack in the centre of the image, her eyes boring into my teenage boy’s overloaded head. “I’ll swap you the Sheena cover,” Alex says conspiratorially, “Just the cover – not the record – I’m keeping that, for your copy of Architecture And Morality.”
Don’t speak to me about morality, Aitken, ya chancer.
Done deal, of course. OMD? OMG more like. What was I thinking?!
Architecture And Morality disappeared from my collection for the next 40 years, until a few months ago when a kindly neighbour had a loft clear out and turned up at my door with a handful of records; some old 12″ singles, an ace Ace Records soul compilation and OMD’s Architecture And Morality. It was like welcoming back a child I had abandoned at birth…before I filed it cruelly away to sit amongst my own stuff – Orange Juice – Orb – Orbital – Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – The Other Two, a shelf padder; a good looking and possibly hip shelf padder, but a padder nonetheless.
Last week I was rearranging some records and pulled it out. I stuck it on, instantly transported to our living room in 1981. Couldn’t handle it. I lifted the needle from the first track and dropped it onto Souvenir. Ah. That’s better. I’d heard it fairly recently, in Irvine’s Harbour Arts Centre before a BMX Bandits show. Duglas had curated a pre-gig mix ‘tape’ and between the Dana Gillespies and Jigsaws and Peter Skellerns and what have you, Souvenir came rolling out. It sounded great in the HAC. It sounded great in 1981. And it still sounded pretty fantastic coming from my own decent set up in the here and now.
This morning I reached for the album again and this time I played it from start to finish. Dared myself not to get up and move it on. This time, it made sense. It was, yep, the sound of an experimental synth band embracing the anything-goes spirit of post-punk and running with it in their own idiosyncratic direction. But it’s not half as weird as I’d convinced myself it was. Arty, but supremely poppy too. A couple more listens this coming week and I reckon I’ll be fully converted. It’s never too late, as it turns out.
I wonder if Alex still has my copy…still plays my copy? His Sheena sleeve has long gone of course, but I still have the internet should I be inclined to look it up. Of course, if I’d had the internet back then, I’d never have needed to swap a cool and arty record for the over-styled sleeve – sleeve! – of an overproduced slice of 80s slop-pop. Unlike my faded attraction to oor Sheena, for Souvenir my feelings still remain.
Plain Or Pan 