Coming out of left field this week, the Human League crashes the top of my chart with “Never Let Me Go,” off Credo, the band’s first album in 10 years. This one has been a slow-burner; sometimes you have to hear a song tens of times before it worms its way into your mind.
Don’t get me wrong, being a child glued to early-'80s MTV, I have long loved the Human League. “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” and “Mirror Man” are two of my favorite songs of all time, and even their least-successful albums have amazing tracks.
Human League songs are mainly Philip Oakey affairs with Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall handling the incidentals. However, Susan (the blonde) takes the lead here. Apart from her iconic verse in “Don’t You Want Me” and her fantastic solo “One Man in My Heart” (from 1994’s Octopus), the girls don’t headline. Not that that’s a bad thing: When I saw them in 1998 at Radio City Music Hall, Joanne was so off-key during her brief bit in “Fascination” that people around me winced and stopped dancing. Perhaps that’s why she was given the spoken aside in “Human.”
As for “Never Let Me Go,” it’s a welcome return, current yet delightfully retro. And the crazy kaleidoscope video should endear the band to the current generation of electropop fans. My one complaint would be, why such heavy use of Autotune? Leave that crap to Britney.
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