Words by Dan O’Farrell. Photos by Darren Grayer.
This was my first visit to Southampton’s Summer Sessions and, despite having walked through Guildhall Square thousands of times and attending many other events there over the years, the size and scale of these TKMaxx-sponsored concerts took me a little by surprise.
For those who haven’t been before, the stage fills pretty much the entire width of the ‘town-end’ of the square, and the Guildhall itself houses the merch-stands, the bars and – luckily, just some of – the toilets. This leaves a huge space to fill and, pleasingly, by the time OMD take to the stage at 8:45 on a hot summer evening, the entire place is rammed (19/6/26). It’s an excitable Friday-night-beveraged crowd of mostly 50 and 60-somethings who – like me – remember the first time they heard a lot of his genre-defining music on the radio in the back of their parents’ cars.
‘Up-for-it’ would be an under-estimation and – with the heat-wave taking its toll – there are a couple of (thankfully minor) medical incidents involved over-heating seniors which seem to be swiftly dealt with by medics. OMD – unsurprisingly – had enormous fun entertaining this heady throng.
Tonight’s bill started with a set by a younger artist. Andew Cushin shares the same Geordie roots as Sam Fender and a similar way with a keening, soulful edge to his voice, which hits an Alex Turner-esque stridency in the faster numbers. He might not yet have the killer-chorus that will leave the audience humming his tunes, but there’s evidence tonight that he’s soon destined to draw big crowds on his own account: classic-songwriting and enjoyable in the summer sun.
In an evening loaded with fun incongruities, the adverts displayed on the big screen as the roadies load up the stage for Peter Hook and The Light invite us to buy tickets for Jane McDonald, a Taylor Swift tribute concert and a Disney-Princess Extravaganza.
Hook’s battered amps – tattily spray-painted with ‘Salford Rules’ and ‘Guitar Hero’ graffiti – look satisfyingly out of place in this mainstream mood, and I start to worry how Joy Division’s ‘Ceremony’ or ‘Atmosphere’ will land in this sun-soaked environment.
Reading the vibe, the band mostly stick to an upbeat, festival-friendly cruise through New Order’s greatest hits. Hook remains… (can I call him ‘Hooky’? I’m not sure I know him well-enough?) – ok – deep-breath: Hooky remains a charismatic performer, bass-slung low as he rumbles through those memorably catchy lead-lines on ‘Temptation’, ‘Blue Monday’ and ‘True Faith’.
The second-bassist looks so improbably similar to a young Peter Hook that it comes as no surprise when he’s introduced as Hooky’s son – Jack Bates.
Hooky handles the lower range vocals with admirable gruffness, and the higher-range material is taken by guitarist David Potts, who does a mean Bernard Sumner but also particularly shines on ‘What Do You Want From Me?’ – the super-catchy Monaco hit that he co-wrote with Hook in the late 90s.
The set ends with two very different classics: a strangely joyous sing-a-long of Ian Curtis’ still-eviscerating paean to desperation – ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ – and then a football-fan-pleasing version of ‘World In Motion’ – New Order’s England song for Italia ’90 – complete with Hooky’s roadie-ing god-son Oscar taking the part of John Barnes for the rap. It all leaves massive smiles on faces, apart from the Scottish fan next to me who pointedly sings ‘Scot-Er-Land’ in every chorus. Fair play!
The rush to the toilets and bar is festival-worthy, and the square feels packed to capacity as we try to squeeze back to a decent vantage-point. OMD hit the stage as the sun starts to drop and the huge-screen (thankfully advert-free for their set-up) immediately leaps into colourful life as 2013’s ‘Atomic Ranch’ splendidly ‘retro-futurist’ animation sets the Kraftwerk-ian-pop mood of what is to follow.
The band launch into 2017’s ‘Isotype’ and it quickly becomes apparent to those of us who’ve lost track of their output that their newer hits are just as infernally catchy as their classics. Singer Andy McClusky is clearly having the time of his life, twitching and wind-milling in an idiosyncratic world of pleasingly discombobulating dance-moves which proudly proclaim that no choreographers were harmed in the preparation for this show.
He’s self-deprecating, highly watchable and in fine voice – promising us ‘18 hit singles’ and barely pausing for breath for the 90-odd minute set (and some minutes were very odd!) Co-founder Paul Humphrys is a shyer presence, but steps up to take lead-vocals on ‘Souvenir’ and seems confounded but pleased when someone throws their pants at him. Incongruities abound everywhere.
OMD are one of those bands who genuinely have more great songs than I realised – the choruses of ‘Forever Live and Die’ and ‘Locomotion’ emerge fully-formed from my brain without being disturbed at any point in the 40 years since Top of the Pops implanted them. It’s interesting, as well, to remember how different, cold and ‘arty’ the songs from ‘Architecture and Morality’ – their breakthrough 1981 album – still sound.
There’s something to be said for the redemptive power of nostalgia that they’re booming out in 2026 to thousands of quite-drunken revellers in a packed square in Southampton, lustily singing along to the synth-lines in the absence of a crowd-pleasing chorus on ‘Maid of Orleans’ or ‘Joan of Arc’. The set closes – as surely it must – with 1980’s ‘Enola Gay’, whose Bontempi-popping drum-machine intro alone is enough to induce mass-ecstasy. The huge screen – compete with footage of the titular B-29 bomber which dropped the atom-bomb on Hiroshima and synchronised mushroom clouds – reminds the crowd of the song’s anti-war roots, but also what a weird sing-along it remains.
Lordy, but the 80s were weird!
Final encore ‘Electricity’ sends a happily sated crowd out into the still-balmy Southampton night and – one imagines – a very happy OMD collective back to hotel-rooms to dream of doing it all again for the rest of their ‘Summer of Hits’ tour.
It’s great to see a band fully enjoying their craft and legacy, rather than just ‘phoning-in’ the hits, and I’m already exploring the orchestral manoeuvres I missed first time round. Great stuff.
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