The sound of immaculate synthesisers begins to whir and echo through the air, as electronic innovators the Human League take to the stage, before a familiar hypnotic pulse sets in and the irresistible Love Action (I Believe in Love) bursts to life. Philip Oakey’s voice remains rich and pristine and it immediately sets the tone for an evening of immaculate electro pop music delivered with grace, precision and elation.
Despite once being regarded as the epitome of synth-washed futurism, tracks such as Mirror Man are a beautiful example of the group’s clear love of the 1960s, with its unquestionable Motown strut being spun into slick electronic soul and with Oakey’s voice working in seamless harmony with those of Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall.
The band lean into the now retro futuristic aesthetic of their peak 1980s era – via keytars, electronic drum kits, neon lights and old school visuals – but while nostalgia may play a role here, there’s still an unshakable pioneering spirit about the music of the Human League. The likes of Empire State Human, Open Your Heart and Sound of the Crowd remain thrillingly fizzy and full of vigour.
Don’t You Want Me plays out as an instrumental to begin with, so by the time Oakey even opens his mouth the crowd are already in full-on gung-ho mode screaming the chorus. It’s a masterful move to extract even more from a pop song that has already given so much, and feels so deeply entrenched into the British psyche that it may as well now be in our DNA.
The closing version of Oakey and Giorgio Moroder’s Together in Electric Dreams is a rousing finisher, and is a perfect bookend to a night that has been bursting at the seams with pop music that sounds as radiant now as it did 40 years ago. And this is one of the great dichotomies of the Human League today: they remain intrinsically connected to a bygone period – in terms of style, tone and production – yet despite being such an era-defining group, what is most evident this evening is just how utterly timeless this music is.
