The Human League - Albums Collection 1980-2001 (13CD)

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The Human League - Albums Collection 1980-2001 (13CD)

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Synth pop's first international superstars, the Human League were among the earliest and most innovative bands to break into the pop mainstream on a wave of synthesizers and electronic rhythms, their marriage of infectious melodies and state-of-the-art technology proving enormously influential on countless acts following in their wake. The group was formed in Sheffield, England in 1977 by synth players Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh, who'd previously teamed as the duo Dead Daughters. Following a brief tenure as the Future, a period during which they added and lost synthesizer player Adi Newton and enlisted vocalist Philip Oakey, they rechristened themselves the Human League. The trio recorded a demo and played their first live dates. The slide presentations of "director of visuals" Adrian Wright quickly became a key component of their performances.

After they signed with the indie label Fast, the Human League issued their first single, "Being Boiled," in 1978. A minor underground hit, it was followed by a tour in support of Siouxsie & the Banshees. After a 1979 EP, the instrumental The Dignity of Labour, the group released its first full-length effort, Reproduction, a dark, dense work influenced largely by Kraftwerk. Travelogue followed the next year and reached the U.K. Top 20. Still, internal tensions forced Ware and Marsh to quit the group in late 1980, at which time they formed Heaven 17. Their departure forced Wright to learn to play the synthesizer; at the same time, Oakey recruited bassist Ian Burden as well as a pair of teenagers, Susanne Sulley and Joanne Catherall, to handle additional vocal duties.

The first single from the revamped Human League, 1981's "Boys and Girls," reached the British Top 50. Recorded with producer Martin Rushent, the slicker follow-up "Sound of the Crowd" fell just shy of the Top Ten. Their next single, "Love Action," reached number three, and after adding ex-Rezillo Jo Callis, the League issued "Open Your Heart," another hit. Still, their true breakthrough was "Don't You Want Me." The classic single, as well as parent album Dare!, both topped their respective charts in England, and went on to become major hits in the U.S. as well. A tour of the States followed, but new music was extremely slow in forthcoming. After a Rushent remix disc, Love and Dancing, the Human League finally issued 1983's Fascination! EP and scored a pair of hits with "Mirror Man" and "(Keep Feeling) Fascination."

The much-anticipated full-length Hysteria finally surfaced in mid-1984, heralding a more forceful sound than earlier Human League releases. The record failed to match the massive success of Dare!, however, with the single "The Lebanon" earning insignificant airplay. The group soon went on indefinite hiatus, and Oakey recorded a 1985 solo LP with famed producer Giorgio Moroder titled simply Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder. To the surprise of many, the Human League resurfaced in 1986 with Crash, produced by the duo of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. The plaintive lead single "Human" soon topped the U.S. charts, but the group didn't capitalize on the comeback success and disappeared from the charts for the remainder of the decade.

When the Human League finally returned in 1990 with Romantic?, their commercial momentum had again dissipated. The single "Heart Like a Wheel" barely managed to rise into the Top 40. The record was the band's last with longtime label Virgin. As a trio consisting of Oakey, Sulley, and Catherall, they ultimately signed with the EastWest label and teamed with producer Ian Stanley for 1995's Octopus. The album went largely unnoticed both at home and overseas, with the single "Stay with Me Tonight" issued solely in the U.K.

A resurgent interest in synth pop and post-punk during the early 2000s enabled the group's 2001 album Secrets, which saw the group update its early sound, considerable press coverage. In 2002, previously unreleased recordings of the Future and the embryonic Human League were compiled for The Golden Hour of the Future. Steady touring continued for several years, as documented on Live at the Dome. Additionally, there were performances of Dare! in its entirety and a Steel City Tour with Heaven 17 and fellow Sheffield natives ABC. The Human League remained connected to their local roots in the studio as well. Credo, released in 2011, was produced by fellow Sheffield natives I Monster. The career-spanning anthology A Very British Synthesizer Group was issued five years later, promoted with performance dates across Europe.

Biography by Jason Ankeny, Allmusic.com

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The Human League - Albums Collection 1980-2001 (13CD)

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The Human League - Albums Collection 1980-2001 (13CD)

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The Human League - Albums Collection 1980-2001 (13CD)

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Pop fans a bit put off by the Human League's dispassionate vocals on their breakout hit "Don't You Want Me" would have been shocked by the degree of emotionlessness heard two years earlier on the band's 1979 debut. The trio of Ian Craig Marsh, Martyn Ware, and Philip Oakey all handled vocals and synthesizers to create a set of grim, rigid tracks that revealed a greater lack of humanity than even Kraftwerk. It's a surprise that the Human League hit the British charts at all (with the single "Empire State Human"), since this could well be the most detached synth pop record ever released.

Review by John Bush, Allmusic.com

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The Human League - Albums Collection 1980-2001 (13CD)

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The Human League's second album, Travelogue, was their first to be released in the U.S. (Not that you would have noticed at the time, given the limited distribution; the album subsequently was picked up for reissue by Virgin/Atlantic in 1988.) It was also the last to feature the nearly original lineup of Martyn Ware, Ian Marsh, Philip Oakey, and Adrian Wright. Already, the band's synthesizer textures and Oakey's mannered voice were starting to lean in a pop direction, but much of this album retained the austere tone of earlier synthesizer groups such as Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. The conflicting musical directions led to a split in the band after this album, with Ware and Marsh forming Heaven 17 and Oakey and Wright reorganizing a new version of The Human League. Ironically, both ventures were more pop-oriented than before.

Review by William Ruhlmann, Allmusic.com

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Dare! captures a moment in time perfectly – the moment post-punk's robotic fascination with synthesizers met a clinical Bowie-esque infatuation with fashion and modern art, including pop culture, plus a healthy love of songcraft. The Human League had shown much of this on their early singles, such as "Empire State Human," but on Dare! they simply gelled, as their style was supported by music and songs with emotional substance. That doesn't mean that the album isn't arty, since it certainly is, but that's part of its power – the self-conscious detachment enhances the postmodern sense of emotional isolation, obsession with form over content, and love of modernity for its own sake. That's why Dare! struck a chord with listeners who didn't like synth pop or the new romantics in 1981, and why it still sounds startlingly original decades after its original release – the technology may have dated, synths and drum machines may have become more advanced, but few have manipulated technology in such an emotionally effective way. Of course, that all wouldn't matter if the songs themselves didn't work smashingly, whether it's a mood piece as eerie as "Seconds," an anti-anthem like "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of," the dance club glow of "Love Action (I Believe in Love)," or the utter genius of "Don't You Want Me," a devastating chronicle of a frayed romance wrapped in the greatest pop hooks and production of its year. The latter was a huge hit, so much so that it overshadowed the album in the minds of most listeners, yet, for all of its shining brilliance, it wasn't a pop supernova – it's simply the brightest star on this record, one of the defining records of its time.

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Allmusic.com

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The Human League followed Dare! with more success, at least when it came to singles. The Motown-inspired "Mirror Man" and the frivolous (in a borderline-genius way) "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" maintained the group's momentum. When recording commenced for the full-length successor to Dare!, however, things got ugly. Martin Rushent, the producer who either receives all or no credit for the Human League's mainstream breakthrough, left the sessions. The slate was wiped clean, but the process was halted once more when another producer, Chris Thomas (Roxy Music, Sex Pistols), also split. Full of indecision and doubt, the group took forever to finish Hysteria. (Two and a half years in the '80s were, in fact, equal to forever, and U.S. label A&M intervened with the Fascination! EP, which contained the post-Dare! singles that did not appear on this album.) Hysteria is mediocre and easily the least of the group's albums to that point. Conscious not to repeat themselves and unable to do it without sacrificing their personality, most of the changes sound forced and fussily mulled over. It was one thing to get political and introduce some uncharacteristic guitar lines on "The Lebanon" (alienating your fanbase should always be encouraged, especially when it's done with a single that looks atrocious on paper but sounds fantastic), but "Rock Me Again" is the kind of thing the group once worked against, with Philip Oakey adopting an awkward, straining rock voice. The melodies are often flat, the arrangements are frequently bloodless. With only a couple exceptions, Hysteria sounds exactly like an album made under extreme post-platinum pressure. If you were to replace your pick of two tracks with "Mirror Man" and "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" – which really wouldn't sound any more out of place than "The Lebanon" – you'd at least have something resembling the group's old standard. Fun fact: it was released three years before a very different Sheffield band's Hysteria.

Andy Kellman, Allmusic.com

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Virgin's 2005 expanded edition, released in the U.S. via Caroline, features remastered sound and five bonus tracks: extended versions of "The Lebanon," "Life on Your Own," and "The Sign," as well as B-sides "Thirteen" and "The World Tonight."

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The Human League turned to American R&B producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis in the wake of their success with Janet Jackson's Control, and the combination brought the group its second number one hit with the Jam-Lewis composition "Human," which harked back to the earlier "Don't You Want Me," albeit with a gentler tone. The album's second single, the Control-soundalike "I Need Your Loving," was also a Jam-Lewis song (as was the U.K.-only third single, "Love Is All That Matters"), but the bulk of the album was made up of group-written songs with appealing backing tracks that maintained their dance appeal while eschewing the overtly synthesized sound of previous albums. That made Crash an improvement over the lackluster Hysteria, but still not on a par with Dare.

Review by William Ruhlmann, Allmusic.com

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Romantic? is the sixth studio album by the English synthpop band The Human League. It was issued by Virgin Records in 1990 and was the band's first album of new material in four years. Romantic? had several producers, most notably Martin Rushent, who worked with the Human League on their biggest commercial success (1981's Dare) and had walked out of the recording sessions for its 1984 follow-up (Hysteria). Also producing several tracks is Mark Brydon, who would found Moloko several years later.

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The Human League hadn't learned any new tricks in the four-plus years it took to craft another one of their synth-pop collections. The best track was the most unusual, when Philip Oakey took a backseat and let one of his fellow vocalists – probably Joanne Catherall, though her singing is interchangeable with Susanne Sulley's – handle a delicately arranged love song, "One Man in My Heart." But more typical was the song that followed it, "Words," in which Oakey whined at considerable length about undetailed wrongs done to him in childhood. Even with a good dance beat, such stuff was hard to stomach, and most of the blips and blats that filled up the tracks had been used to better purpose on earlier recordings.

Review by William Ruhlmann, Allmusic.com

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Fans of the Human League's American hits "Don't You Want Me" and "Human" will find this (and any of the band's many similarly titled compilations) a little perplexing. The bulk of the set are U.K. hits, which are somewhat of an acquired taste, and different from the group's fun, pop new wave stylings. "Open Your Heart," "Love Is All That Matters," and "The Sound of the Crowd" are early efforts that sound much more dated than their biggest hits. Overall, it is an essential purchase if you want to revisit or discover the Human League, but some of the lesser known songs, like "The Lebanon," will be surprisingly different.

Review by JT Griffith, Allmusic.com

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The Human League's first album in more than six years isn't a complete success, but it's a welcome return from Sheffield's finest synth pop band. Only a handful of songs, among them "All I Ever Wanted," "Love Me Madly?," "Never Give Your Heart," "Liar," and "Reflections," stand up against the band's finest work from the past, but these songs are wholly endearing in their marriage of modern technology and the band's romantic sound. "Love Me Madly?" is particularly engaging, as it throttles along aggressively thanks to Phil Oakey's mad, repeated chant of the title and lyrics like "I'm getting ready for a freak-out." It's simultaneously an urgent and exhilarating grasp at the past and a gaze into the future. Updated technology adds more dimension and bite to "Liar" as well. The song's crunchy bass and racing electronic sounds make for punchy fun. "Reflections" might be the standout track, its weird samples and loopy style recalling past glories like "Empire State Human." The album's Achilles' heel is its seven instrumental tracks. Some of them are quite interesting, but they feel too much like meandering song fragments. Secrets is a minor work against the band's masterpiece, Dare, but it's still a fine introduction into the 21st century for Oakey and company.

Review by Tim DiGravina, Allmusic.com

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The Human League - Albums Collection 1980-2001 (13CD)

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Thirty years may have passed since their landmark album Dare! helped to define the early-'80s electro scene, but the Human League's signature sound remains just as relevant today thanks to synth pop starlets like La Roux, Ladyhawke, and in particular, Little Boots, who collaborated with lead vocalist Phil Oakey on her 2009 debut, Hands. For Credo, their their first studio album since 2001's Secrets, the Sheffield trio don't require much of a makeover in order to compete with their younger upstarts. Produced by lounge-pop revivalists I Monster (whose Dean Honer also worked with Oakey on the All Seeing I's Top 30 single "First Man in Space"), there are admittedly a few modern concessions, such as the heavy use of Auto-Tune on the robotic disco of opening track "Never Let Me Go," the nods to acid house on "Electric Shock," and the drum'n'bass leanings of the industrial closer "When the Stars Start to Shine." But otherwise it's business as usual, with Catherall and Sulley's half-hearted detached tones combining with Oakey's trademark booming baritone on the likes of "Sky," a melancholic fusion of brooding basslines, kaleidoscopic bleeps, and lost love lyrics; the new wave call and response of "Breaking the Chains," and the stuttering synths and avant-garde theatrics of "Privilege," the latter of which Oakey admitted is a deliberate attempt to recapture the spirit of their 1979 debut, Reproduction. However, apart from "Night People," a pulsating slice of bubbling electro featuring a Dalek-inspired chorus and bizarre lyrics which rhymes "houses" with "mouses", Credo never really comes close to matching the infectious joy of "Don't You Want Me," "Love Action," or even their last major hit, "Tell Me When," its sparse arrangements and lack of memorable melodies, making it difficult to distinguish the majority of its 11 tracks from one another. With their influential sound currently back in vogue, Credo could have been the perfect opportunity to prove to their devotees that they haven't lost their touch, but although there are a few flashes of their heyday's magic, it's a strangely low-key affair which is unlikely to inspire any future synth pop maestros.

Review by Jon O'Brien, Allmusic.com