The Human League

The most impressive thing about the Human League's output isn't that the band went from avant pop to Top 40 in three albums, but that its best singles hold up despite all the hokey electronics.

Needless to say, the League's early recordings sound pretty primitive at this point. With its buzzing, clanking synths and dour "postindustrial" perspective, Reproduction sounds less like a rock album than an art school project gone awry; even its nod to the mainstream -- a cover of the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" -- seems studied and theory-driven. The League loosens up some with Travelogue, with songs that are more melodic and accessible. But the rudimentary synth programming renders the arrangements clunky and mechanical.

Between Travelogue and Dare two unexpected developments dramatically changed the Human League's sound. One was the departure of Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh, the band's original synth wizards; the other was the introduction of the Linn drum, a computerized drum machine that used digitally sampled drum sounds instead of synthesized equiv-alents. Original singer Phil Oakey recruited a new lineup, including ex-Rezillo Jo Callis plus singers Jo-anne Catherall and Susanne Sulley (whom Oakey claimed to have met at a disco), and delivered the first true synth-pop album. In truth, the most radical thing about Dare was its instrumentation, since the songs -- particularly "Love Action (I Believe in Love)" and the marvelously melodramatic "Don't You Want Me" -- were fairly conventional pop numbers. But in 1981, drum machines and sequencers were novelty enough, and helped make Dare an international smash.

The League immediately cashed in on its newfound success, releasing an amusing album of dance-oriented remixes entitled Love and Dancing, which is credited, in a nod to Barry White, to the League Unlimited Orchestra. An amusing trifle, it's a prelude of sorts to Fascination!, a somewhat thinner slice of dance pop whose principal point of interest is the flirtatious "(Keep Feeling) Fascination." Apparently afraid of falling into a rut, the Human League triedto turn serious again with Hysteria. Unfortunately, pompous message-heavy numbers such as "The Leba-non" are as ridiculous as dance fluff like "Rock Me Again and Again and Again and Again and Again and Again."

Luckily, the League then decamped for Minneapolis and the studios of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. Crash is a fairly schizo affair, with some songs ("Money," for instance) sounding like the Human League of yore, albeit with a better rhythm section, and others ("Swang") coming across like contemporary R&B sung by the generally soulless Oakey, Sulley, and Catherall. Fortunately, "Human," a classic Jam & Lewis ballad, finds the perfect middle ground, thus rescuing the album as well as the group.

"Human," along with the rest of the group's singles, can also be found on Greatest Hits, which is understandably the most consistent album in the group's catalogue. (The Very Best offers a similar, though slightly inferior, selection.) The League returns to its old tricks with Romantic? and seems to have recorded Octopus and Secrets simply to have a "new album" to flog while working the nostalgia circuit. (J.D. CONSIDINE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide