OMD • June 6, 2025 • The Union
Reviewed and Photographed by Kevin Rolfe
Summer is here. The warmer weather means more concerts. There are so many shows coming to Utah this summer and anticipation is high for so many of them. It’s one thing to get excited about seeing one of your favorite bands come to Utah. It’s another thing when that band was scheduled to play almost a year ago and had to cancel. That was the case with Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, or OMD.
Rescheduled Date
OMD was scheduled to play Utah on September 25, 2024. Unfortunately, the North American Tour had to be rescheduled because lead singer Andy McCluskey needed a knee replacement. If you’ve seen OMD before, you’d know that McCluskey moves about the stage frequently. Dancing and jumping with the vigor of a man half his age. While I was disappointed at the rescheduling, it made sense. We were happy to have a healthy Andy and the rest of OMD at The Union Events Center for their rescheduled June 6, 2025 date.
Having to wait these long extra months only heightened the anticipation of this already sold-out show. 3,500 people packed The Union early. Spirits were high. Everyone I talked to was in a great mood. Some fans arrived earlier in the day to get their place along the front railing. One lifelong OMD fan brought his entire family. Each member wearing a different OMD shirt. Now that’s just good parenting. OMD has been around since the late 70s, so I was a little concerned that the show might be subdued due to the aging audience. But I was pleasantly surprised. You would have thought we had jumped in a time machine and were seeing OMD 25 years ago. This audience was on fire the entire night. The energy was impressive.
OMD
I stood in the photo pit as OMD took the stage. Standing in between the band and their audience is an experience I’ll never get over. Especially when it’s a relationship like this. These fans adore this band. And OMD knows just how to get them going. Andy McCluskey is one of the most underrated frontmen in music. He never stops moving and motivating the audience to dance and have a great time. He told the audience, “You know we’ve been waiting to come see you again. You know what I’m going to say. Put your dancing shoes on.”
I am a huge fan of OMD. They’re one of my all time favorites. And so many of my other favorite bands like Erasure, Depeche Mode, and so on have been influenced by Orchestral Manouevers in the Dark. So this was not just a concert review assignment for me. This was me fighting to stay professional when one I’m hearing some of my favorite songs, like “Messages” and “Tesla Girls” performed. I had to resist just standing there and taking in this great music and these classic songs. I did my best to remain poised. It’s a surreal experience. My younger self would never have believed this happened. My current self is being pinched to make sure it did.
This setlist was so well put together. OMD has so many great hit songs. And yet the thing that I’ve been most impressed with is since their reformation in 2006, they’ve actually put out some great music. So many bands from their era still release music but for whatever reason it fails to connect with their audience and they’re resigned to just playing their hits. But when OMD played “History of Modern Part 1” from their 2006 album, History of Modern, the audience is jumping and singing along just as much as they are with “Tesla Girls”. McCluskey jokingly told us that they’ve been patiently waiting to get a call to use “Teslas Girls” in an electric car ad. “But now Elon is too busy having an argument with Donald.”
Speaking of, OMD featured a handful of songs from their most recent release, Bauhaus Sataircase. An album that reached Number 2 on the UK charts. I think the album would have done well hear too if the band didn’t need to go on hiatus. Regardless the songs are good and they fit right into the setlist with the other greats. “Don’t Go” and “Look At You Now” were particularly good.
Paul Humphries, the other cofounder of OMD, stepped away from his synths to bring us one of my favorite OMD tracks, “Forever Live and Die”. The audience swayed and sang the chorus so loudly. He also sang a great version of “Souvenier”. I forget sometimes just how great the Paul Humphries songs are. I’m glad that he gets these featured spots. These songs were great.
The Humphries songs sandwiched what is probably OMD’s most recognizable song, “If You Leave”. The audience loved this song. I personally loved that they performed it relatively early. Don’t get me wrong, I really like “If You Leave”. But I know OMD has so many songs that are better and I wanted to hear those when the concert reached it’s zenith.
Sure enough, OMD played amazing song after amazing song. “Joan of Arc” and “Maid of Orleans” are musts in an OMD set. It was great to see that Andy McCluskey’s knee was in good shape as he danced during the instrumental part of “Maid of Orleans”.
It was exciting to hear “Pandora’s Box” and “Sailing the Seven Seas” off of the album Sugar Tax. I loved that album when it came out. Memories of listening to it over and over either in my room or in my best friend’s car swirled through my head as these songs were performed. I know they’ve done them before when I’ve seen OMD. But it seems like I’ll hear just one at a time. I’d love to hear more from that album in future shows.
The show ended so strong. I didn’t know if the crowd would last. But everytime they even thought of slowing down, Andy would fire them up. “So In Love”, “Dreaming”, “Locomotion” all in a row. Are you kidding me?! Then closing out the main set with one of the great songs, “Enola Gay”. How could we possibly let up? We didn’t. I was sweating like crazy and I didn’t care.
The night ended perfectly. The band returned to peform their encore and McCluskey stated, “Can I just say, WOW! What a fantastic noise! We’d better do some more huh? OK! Paul took the mic again performing what might be the biggest hit that was never a hit for OMD, “Secret”. I remember when they left this song off their first tour back from reuinitng. Fans made their feelings known and it has remained on the setlist ever since. That was followed with Andy telling us, “I have someone in my ears telling me we have six minutes before they shut off the electricity. So let’s play a song called, ‘Electricity’. OMD played their first hit to close out the night and the audience had plenty of their own energy to finish strong.
OMD is a band that I’ll see every chance I get. They have not lost a step in their almost 50 years as a band. They continue to impress and energize their fanbase. I dread the day they stop touring. In the mean time, they told us they’ll be back. I’m holding them to it.
