Listening to OMD's Architecture & Morality is a bit like going to a modern art installation and, amidst all the boldly colored squares and symmetrical lines, you find a cute and mysterious young woman. She isn't quite part of the exhibit, but the distant expression on her face gives you the same mystified reaction as all those simple shiny blocks, light-bulb dresses, lobsters in tuxedos and upside down chairs. Some pieces are disjointed, others tightly packed together. But that girl - that regret buried in the circles under her eyes - brings it all together.
You take in the album, with all of its bright synthesizers, tin-can drum machine and Andy McCluskey's "disheartened lounge singer" delivery, and the vision becomes clear. Amidst chiming synths and an anxious bass on "She's Leaving", McCluskey sets you up for a fall, "we never learn to bide our hearts/we won't find what we deserve/she's leaving, waiting for so long". He goes on to deliver a very black and blue situation: "she pretends that he cares," announcing an unrequited passion, then moving on after being wracked by anticipation, "she wiped her hands of the whole affair".
The album is all about regret - a lost memento on "Souvenir", the impossible boyish crush on "Joan of Arc" - it is that girl in the gallery. She's lost in the construction of the shapes and you - you are reminded of all the missed connections and discarded opportunities in your own life.
Architecture & Morality is as ethereal as it is evocative. It's a light turquoise dream, hazy with compunction. However, there is an anxiousness there and it's palpable. With this album, OMD managed to make the coldest of synths sound like the perfect choir for a bleary-eyed romantic fantasy.
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