Absolutely gorgeous and lovely synth-pop. This old school synth-pop album has some incredibly luscious synths, the juicy synths on this album make it such a comfy listen. The album was very politically fueled (which you can even tell from the band's name) and has quite a few songs about the ever-present threat that the Cold War was, the last track is a real testament to the growing fear of the time. Honestly it's everything one could wish for in a synth-pop album: dreamy female vocals, super catchy and all around fantastic synths, great production, and so on. It's one of my favorite synth-pop albums and for good reasons; I highly recommend it.
What's the use of being free
All that's left is you and me
Trapped from the start
Tear each other's world apart
I agree with your assessment, definitely one of the most interesting albums of the early eighties and even with the music-blog induced resurgence of interest in the synthpop or 'darkwave' as the youngsters call it I believe ;), OA still do not enjoy the credit they deserve and it is good to see it posted here.
ReplyDeleteAs you rightly assess, the early eighties were dominated by the spectre of nuclear annihilation and the subject matter adequately reflects those concerns, though it was far more visceral than abstract from my own experience - though then, as now, my fear was largely directed towards the western empire as the instigators of any nuclear war, the Russian people, having lost 20 plus million people in WWII understood more than any other nation back then, the cost of war.
Great post and I do like reading your comments, beats the Google search for a review and "cut and paste" approach of most music blogs