The Pacific Age


The Pacific Age is the seventh studio album by English electronic band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, released on 29 September 1986 by Virgin Records. It was the last of two OMD albums produced by American record producer Stephen Hague. " Live and Die" became the band's third hit single in the US and returned the band to the top 20 in the UK, peaking at No. 11. The album received generally unfavourable reviews and is held in low esteem by frontman Andy McCluskey.

Album information

For the first time, brothers Graham and Neil Weir were formally credited as full members of OMD for this album. They had been involved with the band as session musicians since the re-recording of "Julia's Song" in 1984 as a "Talking Loud and Clear" single B-side, and were credited as "also playing" musicians on the 1985 album Crush. The single " Live and Die" was written by the Weir brothers with Paul Humphreys.
Owing to label-enforced time constraints, the first nine songs written for The Pacific Age appeared on the album. The songs "Cajun Moon" and "Cut Me Down" were almost featured, but according to Andy McCluskey, "democracy won out". Both tracks were included on the band's 40th anniversary retrospective boxset, Souvenir, which carries a CD of unreleased material. 1983 holdover "Heaven Is" was nudged off The Pacific Age in favour of "Flame of Hope", but the song eventually surfaced on 1993's Liberator.

Reception and legacy

The Pacific Age met with negative reviews from the British music press. Melody Maker described the record as "Wheezing, crumpled and limp... a bitter, bitter disappointment". In Sounds, it was portrayed as "Slick and slobbery, just a bunch of bored professionals really".
In a retrospective review, Trouser Press said: "Except for the smoothly contrived hit " Live and Die" and the catchy "We Love You," this dilettantish mess is less a set of songs than a meaningless collection of sounds." A more favourable Dave Connolly of AllMusic noted OMD's "mastery of melody and mood" and "interesting patterns", but felt that much of the album is "more style than substance". In a 2013 online poll, The Pacific Age was voted the 46th best album of 1986 based on the opinions of almost 53,000 respondents.
Frontman Andy McCluskey said that on The Pacific Age, the band had "lost the plot" due to being afforded "no real time to take stock and write some decent material"; he also feels that the album's production "just doesn't sound like ". McCluskey noted that the record features tracks he wishes the band had never released.

Track listing

Band members
Additional performers