The Human League, November 2014. Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool. Photograph by Ian D. Hall
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
There are not many bands around whose music manages to be impossibly and wonderfully timeless and yet still sound as if it is as fresh as a newly plucked rose being placed into the hands of a loved one, there aren’t many but then there are not that many bands like The Human League.
It seems an interminable age since The Human League came to Liverpool and played at the Philharmonic Hall on a night in which the roof was raised and the huge crowd paid homage in their droves, an age in which the fans have yearned in hope for the return of Philip Oakey, Joanne Catherall and Susan Sully and must have looked forlornly on as venues in Manchester and the surrounding areas were chosen to host one of the seminal groups of the 1980s.
Good things come to a city that waits and Liverpool waits more patiently than others. The fans of The Human League it seems would wait a year and day for news of a tour and then the same again for the group to dazzle them with minimalistic brilliance and in all things, as it always is, the wait was just the eager signs of anticipation of a night of music that was as highly polished as the floor in Sheffield City Hall, in all the night that the audience were treated to on a cold St. Andrew’s Day evening was the synth era made regal.
More than 35 years after the formation of the band, the sound of a heart beat banging against the rib cage in a desperate attempt to plunge itself out of the body and get upon the floor and find its groove can be plainly be imagined, if not heard. The infectious notes comes together with the audience inside the Philharmonic Hall stood as one as songs such as Mirror Man and The Sound of the Crowd boomed across the recently refurbished hall on Liverpool’s historic Hope Street and the smiles on all were wider than the gap that spans the divide between the Westminster Empire and the realities of 21st Century Britain.
This night was billed as part the AU Tour, a tour in which the Alternate Universe was hauled away from the hindrance of what followed in certain quarters after the 1980s gave way to, what turned out for many, lean times in the art of making something new, boisterous, compelling and wonderfully devilish. The Human League were at the forefront of an exciting time because they just knew instinctively what was a sound to die for and the crowd inside the Philharmonic Hall could only agree with them as tracks such as Lebanon, Life On Your Own, the ever beautiful Louise, Night People, Love Is The Reason, the earthy charge of (Keep Feeling)Fascination, Tell Me When, the song in which is more than just a crowd pleaser, it is a pure and simple electronic anthem, Don’t You Want Me, Being Boiled and Together In Electric Dreams were greeted as if the intervening years hadn’t happened and The Human League were quite simply masters and mistresses of all they surveyed.
As 2014 throws on its winter overcoat in its final sad embrace before the clock strikes midnight, The Human League once more cheered a city’s music fan base up before the gloom of dark shadowy nights tugged hard on the shoulder of discontent. There will be those that might petition for the group to come back every few months just to keep the vibe going, who could blame them on this type of performance.
Ian D. Hall