Music / Reviews
Review: The Human League, Colston Hall
If The Human League had been able to hear what the audience heard at Colston Hall tonight, they would have curled up in shame.
Eye-wateringly out-of-tune vocals from Joanne Catherall and Susan Sulley pierced the eardrums of even the most hardened of 80s pop fans… and at times even stalwart Leaguer Phil Oakey joined them in the tone-deaf doldrums.
Admittedly, Phil was also prowling up and down the white staircase all evening, dressed in black like a skinny Nosferatu and barking out lyrics in the manner of an angry whippet.
is needed now More than ever
But it’s not all bad. Because it would be impossible to see a band as decade defining as The Human League without them knowing all the right buttons to press.
Yes, Joanne and Susan might have been miserably out of tune all night, but when they sauntered on stage to Mirror Man, they were still just two schoolgirls having a bop at the Monday night hop, waiting to be handpicked for a career in pop.
After 30 minutes and with the dawn of The Lebanon, the League were finally in business. The audience rose to their feet to yell “From the Lebanon” along with Angry Phil, who marched from corner to corner of the stage to bark those three words at everyone in the audience, just in case someone had missed who might have won when the soldiers had gone.
But the trouble with this crowd of mums and dads taking to their feet was that the music was almost drowned out by a chorus of disapproving tuts from those around them who preferred to enjoy their 80s nostalgia from the comfort of a seat and a view unobscured by paunchy dads rocking their tums to the strains of Keep Feeling Fascination.
And even though the trio were joyfully tone deaf for the closing encore of Electric Dreams (to my mind, the very best song in their catalogue), it was still a hilarious performance. Whether this was due to Phil reappearing in a Seinfeld-esque puffy shirt it’s hard to say.
One can only charitably imagine the poor show must have been a combination of last-gig-of-the-tour fatigue and an inability to properly hear what was coming through their earpieces.
Because I’ve seen the League before, and they were a thousand times better than the wincingly bad tunelessness they offered Bristol.
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
