LIVE REVIEW + PHOTOS: The Human League, Soft Cell in Boston, MA (06.27.26)
On Saturday, I was back at the gorgeous Wang Center for the Generation Tour, having seen Soft Cell last year at the Xfinity Center. I was curious to see how the more intimate room would feel this time around. Marc Almond answered that quickly, opening with “Memorabilia,” this time with snippets of Madonna’s “Holiday” and “Get Into the Groove” woven in, both new additions since the last show.
Straight into “Danceteria” — the title track from their forthcoming final album, named after the legendary New York club where Warhol and Madonna were regulars. It carries that same restless energy: a groove that pulses without ever fully resolving, Marc skimming over it like he owns the uncertainty. Then “A Man Could Get Lost,” which operates in a different register entirely, more inward, built around drift and displacement rather than hook.
Marc was noticeably more alive than last year in high spirits, working the room, clearly feeding off a crowd that came ready. Philip Larsen, behind the synth, was locked in all night with the kind of presence that makes you feel like you’ve wandered into an MTV set from 1983.
“Loving You, Hating Me” pulled a lot of the room with it; more people knew the words than I expected, which I think is exactly why Marc looked so energized. Then “Out Come the Freaks” caught me off guard as the crowd igniter, a jerky post-punk groove hitting some frequency between art-school and dance floor that people just couldn’t resist.
Capping off the set was “Tainted Love” into “Where Did Our Love Go” Marc continuing to work the crowd, calling for them, getting it back every time. “Where Did Our Love Go” is my personal favorite, and live, it just expands the Motown lift, colliding with the synths underneath, until four minutes feels both too long and not nearly enough. Backup vocalists Louise Marshall and Bryan Chambers deserve a full mention here: their harmonies gave the whole thing a weight the studio version doesn’t quite reach. For anyone who hadn’t registered them before, they certainly did by the end.
Then came The Human League. I’ll be honest about where I stood going in: I knew one or two songs, the ones that live in the cultural atmosphere, whether you’ve sought them out or not. But I looked around before they even hit the stage and took stock, almost every adult man in the room had their tour shirt on. That’s a different kind of crowd. These were people who’d been waiting, probably for years, and they were going to make sure you knew it.
The set was massive, almost entirely white, a wall of light that turned the Wang Center into what felt like a new environment. The drummer came out first to beats that didn’t quite sound like anything, not rock, not dance, something synthetic and pulse-like that put you on edge in the right way. Then the keyboardists and I immediately understood why I didn’t know this band better: I had simply been missing out.
Philip Oakey walked out in full commitment, 1940s bandleader meets 1980s fashion plate, shoulder pads doing serious structural work, the goatee of a man who decided who he was a long time ago and never went back. They opened with “The Sound of the Crowd,” and the room locked in immediately. “Mirror Man” followed, and I wasn’t familiar with it, but everyone around was, which tells you everything about the depth of fandom in that building.
Then Susan Ann Sulley and Joanne Catherall took the stage. These two are not incidental to the Human League; they are the Human League. Their voices alongside Oakey have a chemistry that forty years has only sharpened. “The Things That Dreams Are Made Of” was their showcase, “One Man in My Heart” their moment to stretch, and through “Louise,” “Seconds,” “The Lebanon,” “Human,” “Love Action,” “Tell Me When,” and “(Keep Feeling) Fascination,” the set moved with the confidence of a band that has nothing left to prove.
“Don’t You Want Me” closed it. The extended instrumental intro came first, teasing the room until it could barely hold itself together, then the vocals arrived, and it erupted. Sulley and Catherall trading lines with Oakey the way they’ve been doing since 1981, the audience singing it back to them in full.
The Human League had a much longer set than Soft Cell’s—much bigger production. But what stayed with me was how inhabited all of it felt, songs being maintained, while still being lived in
Photos – The Human League, Soft Cell at Wang Center in Boston, MA on June 27th:
