Billboard May 1984
With two top producers aborad, the long-awaited album, sequel to the British synth-pop band’s hit U.S. debut is easily their lushest sounding. That, and solid, dance-oriented material, should insure radio and club attention, but this time around the sextet faces a much more crowded field working this electronic vein.
Rolling Stone May 1984
Parke Puterbaugh
Just what was it about Dare, Human League’s gold album, and “Don’t You Want Me”, their 1982 megahit, that set the entire nation’s feet to tapping and opened the floodgates for the electropop torrent that followed? I’m not sure even Human League knows; Hysteria, the groupøs first full album since Dare (they fashioned a mini-LP from singles last year), mostly find them with a case of cold feet and the sound of a good groove gone static.
In essence, singer, leader and main synthesist Philip Oakey sound lost in unfriendly environs. His voice sits in the middle of these songs, failing to connect with either the stark synthesizers or the mechanically thumping drum machine. Listen to the leaden lockstep of “I Love You Too Much” or “Betrayed”; what happened to the humanity in the League, the sense of celebration (not to mention melody) that packed dance floors? There are a few stabs at this sort of anthem – “The Sign”, “I’m Coming Back” – but they feel rote.
With some selective editing, Hysteria might have made a fine minialbum. The A side could have included “Rock Me Again And Again And Again And Again And Again And Again (Six Times) and “Don’t You Know I Want You”, the two likeliest club hits and the only songs here that rock out with some spirit. On the flip, I’d put “Louise” and “Life On Your Own”; both are melancholy ballads about breakup, aloneness and “winter…approaching”, with moving vocals from Oakey. It’s a little bit out of their, uh, league, but at least it works, which is more than can be said of most of the material on Hysteria.
**
NME July 1990
Stuart Maconie
…“Hysteria” lacks a lot of “Dare”s spark and overall cleanliness. Often reminiscent of ’83-period Gang Of Four, with its tight, minimal funk bass and distant female harmonies, it sounds faceless and even uncomfortable. James Brown’s “Rock Me Again” is a glaring misjudgement and the albums lowest low. “Don’t You Know I Want You”, however, is rescued by a shiny and thrilling chorus. But that’s it.
Q Magazine 1995
Often-overlooked League nugget, looser than predecessor in arrangement and stance, repeleasent with three Top 20 hits: dreamy, half-speed Life On Your Own, lovey-deovey paean Louise, and The Lebanon, to wit: “Before he leaves the camps he stops, and where there used to be some shops”.
****
William Ruhlmann
The Human League's two-and-a-half-year effort to come up with a follow-up to Dare resulted in Hysteria, which tinkered with the hit formula, demoting producer Martin Rushent to computer programmer on only a few cuts. It was probably a mistake to release the politically oriented "The Lebanon" as the first single, especially in the U.S., where the country is called merely "Lebanon" and where the band was known primarily for the romantic "Don't You Want Me." That song wasn't typical of the album, which featured a remake of the earlier hit ("Don't You Know I Want You"), but was mostly filled with nondescript synthesizer dance tracks that barely deserved to be called songs...
**½
www.cmj.com new
Jimmy Guterman
Submitted for your approval: a seven-piece, marginally successful British
band that implodes and splits down the middle. One half becomes B.E.F. and
finds success in its own "(We Don't Need No) Fascist Groove Thang" and
masterful productions of Tina Turner's comeback single, "Let's Stay Together."
But it is the other half that concerns us here, for they are the ones who
embark on this adventure. Emerging from a lawsuit with the rights to the
moniker Human League, they recruit two teenage girls who can't sing, and
score an international blockbuster hit with "Don't You Want Me." Ultimately,
they follow up their hit album, Dare, with an American tour affectionately
known as "Waterloo." It is now two years later and all they have to show for
themselves are a pair of good, albeit derivative, singles ("Mirror Man" and
"(Keep Feeling) Fascination") and a filler-laden EP. They fire their
producer, Martin Rushent who all-but-created them, and take complete control,
putting out an album in the spring of 1984. They write on the sleeve: "All
sellections played, sung, percussed and programmed by the Human League."
They title this album Hysteria, but it should be called Lethargy because
this piece of round vinyl is as exciting as watching someone read last
week's papers. "I'm Coming Back," the singer sings. "No thanks," his
audience responds. The deadest song on this album of corpses is "The Lebanon,"
in which the Human League takes on one of the most emotionally-charged
situations on the planet today and renders it emotionally impotent. There is
no energy, no ambition. This group sings about passion but cannot find it.
The Human League has entered that netherworld where reality has been left
behind and where massive amounts of money and beeping machines replace real
people and real instruments. They have left us and entered "The Twilight
Zone."
www.popmatters.com September 2005 new
A Failed Bid for Chart Success Revisited
The Human League, although still
regarded as an influential band, had the potential to be absolutely huge.
Dare was a massive hit worldwide, a perfect synthesis of experimental
electronics and sugary dance-pop. "Don't You Want Me", it could be argued,
was the defining moment of the entire synth-pop scene, a piece of epic
bombast that captures the spirit of the times while transcending it. The
band followed this up with two classic singles, "(Keep Feeling) Fascination"
and "Mirror Man", that moved the band even closer to the pop mainstream,
whetting appetite for Dare's sequel. After a two-year gap, an
eternity in the pop landscape of the '80s, Hysteria finally arrived,
and despite some chart success, it effectively ended the Human League's
existence as a dominant musical entity. Hysteria, in effect, has been
forgotten about in the term's of the group's career, treated as sort of a
rehashed, watered down Dare.
Caroline Records has now reissued Hysteria with additional bonus
tracks, and the album, free of expectations, actually turns out to be
something of a minor gem. This was the last release of the "classic" version
of the Human League, their later albums would venture far off from the
synth-pop course, and, if it's lacking in the vision and experimentalism of
its predecessor, Hysteria makes up for it with a series of
well-crafted new wave singles. Oddly enough, Oakey's growing concession to
the pop world was probably what doomed Hysteria to minor league
status. Dare's success lied with its ability to craft powerful pop
songs that had a dark and bleak undercurrent. For every "Love Action", there
were songs about "Darkness" and the assassination drama "Seconds".
Hysteria only features one dark song, the guitar-driven "The Lebanon".
This stark tale of life during wartime filled with huge drums and soaring
guitars, when released as the debut single, alienated the Human League's
core group of fans with its attempt to ape anthemic bands like U2 and the
Alarm. Even if it did not go over well with the synth-pop crowd, perhaps
because its highly politicized lyrics were so alien to the dance culture
Human League appealed to, "The Lebanon" is a clear album highlight, a jolt
of serious rock and roll in an album that occasionally dips into cheesiness.
And, yes, a
listener can find plenty of head scratching moments of pure cheese on
Hysteria, most notably the dance floor wannabe entitled, deep breath
here, "Rock Me Again and Again and Again and Again and Again", where Phillip
Oakey, laughingly, attempts to use his detached croon to carry a
half-hearted stab of pointless Hi-NRG nonsense. The concluding "Don't You
Know I Want You", which ought to have confused the heck out of dyslexics
looking for the album that featured "Don't You Want Me", with its
pseudo-African rhythms, is perhaps one of the most dreadful songs the League
ever recorded, ends the album proper on a flat note. (The bonus tracks, as
well, are fairly regrettable: an instrumental, a dull outtake, and three "extended
versions" of Hysteria's hits that fail to convince me that the
12-inch single was a groundbreaking creative medium.) However,
the rest of the album features the band following the amazing pop smarts
that informed "Mirror Man" and "(Keep Feeling) Fascination", none more so
than the lost classic "The Sign". I feel that if "The Sign", rather than "The
Lebanon", were the lead-off single from Hysteria, the album may have
fared better. "The Sign" is pure sugar, it makes "(Keep Feeling)
Fascination" sound like "Hurt", Philip Oakey had always made his intentions
known that he wanted to prove that electronics were not just for
experimentation but they could be used in the service of pop music. Nobody
in 1986 needed to be told this, but the shimmering, good time, "everything
will be fine" message of "The Sign" should have hammered home the message.
It is, in fact, a perfection of the Human League pop formula, capitalizing
on beautiful and alien sounds that could only be coaxed out of synthesizers,
as well as the powerful tension between Oakey's deep alienated croaks and
the female singers' naïve chirpiness. Did I
mention something about the Human League having a "pop formula"? Well, I am
not kidding. Listening to Hysteria I was struck about how each of
these songs seemed to be following similar patterns using specific tricks,
but, on the other hand, I was noticing about how well it worked even when
you noticed how formulaic the album was. Although the album took a long time
to create, Hysteria seems effortless, as if the band could rattle of
big hooks and catchy songs at a whim. There isn't much range on the album,
it's filled mostly with call-and-response pop songs that rely on heavy
concentration of choruses ("I'm Coming Back" and "So Hurt" being the best).
There are two ballads, "Louise" and "Life on Your Own", which appear mainly
because they felt they needed some ballads in the mix, where they sound a
little like a rougher version of their Sheffield peers ABC. Overall, this is
just a simple album, where the band sacrifices the complex arrangements and
darker undertones of Dare in order to worship on the altar of Pop
Muzik. For the Human League, the shiny, unvarnished, plastic noise of
Hysteria represented an artistic step down, but the album still holds up
as a beacon of synth-pop bubblegum.
www.allmusic.com
new
www.adriandenning.co.uk 2007
new Three years
away was a long time in the eighties. Human League lost their producer and a
vital part of their makeup. Martin Rushent was more than a producer for
Human League, in effect, he was an additional band member. 'Hysteria'
suffers from his absence. In fact, gone is the bands earlier pioneering
spirit. Any changes this album has sound forced, eg, additional guitar. What
was the point of that, really? When it works, it works well, though. 'The
Lebanon' was an excellent single, a big hit, it meant something lyrically
and sounds very well arranged and produced. The guitar lines here work very
well over the synths. The styles meld together. The albums opening track 'I'm
Coming Back' however sounds like a synth demo with a few guitar parts
needlessly tacked on over the top. It also sounds cheap. In fact, 'Hysteria'
sounds less advanced in terms of programming and beats than 'Dare' had done
three years earlier, an odd thing. 'Rock Me Again' is a hideous track with a
disco beat and very strained Phil Oakey vocals. The chorus repeats the songs
title and beats it into the ground. The very concept used to be alien to the
group anyway. 'Rock Me Again'? It's not actually a guitar / bass / drums
workout, rather a comically cheery and cheap synth melody that doesn't
actually do very much. Far better and ranking alongside 'The Lebanon' and
the bands earlier work is the sweet ballad 'Louise'. A story-telling,
matter-of-fact vocal delivery does the job here and the melodies are just
very nice and the lyrics imaginative.
The Human League followed
Dare! with
more success, at least when it came to singles. The Motown-inspired "Mirror
Man" and the frivolous (in a borderline-genius way) "(Keep Feeling)
Fascination" maintained the group's momentum. When recording commenced for
the full-length successor to
Dare!,
however, things got ugly.
Martin Rushent,
the producer who either receives all or no credit for the Human League's
mainstream breakthrough, left the sessions. The slate was wiped clean, but
the process was halted once more when another producer,
Chris Thomas (Roxy
Music,
Sex Pistols),
also split. Full of indecision and doubt, the group took forever to finish
Hysteria. (Two and a half years in the '80s were, in fact, equal to
forever, and U.S. label A&M intervened with the
Fascination!
EP, which contained the post-Dare!
singles that did not appear on this album.) Hysteria is mediocre and
easily the least of the group's albums to that point. Conscious not to
repeat themselves and unable to do it without sacrificing their personality,
most of the changes sound forced and fussily mulled over. It was one thing
to get political and introduce some uncharacteristic guitar lines on "The
Lebanon" (alienating your fanbase should always be encouraged, especially
when it's done with a single that looks atrocious on paper but sounds
fantastic), but "Rock Me Again" is the kind of thing the group once worked
against, with
Philip Oakey
adopting an awkward, straining rock voice. The melodies are often flat, the
arrangements are frequently bloodless. With only a couple exceptions,
Hysteria sounds exactly like an album made under extreme post-platinum
pressure. If you were to replace your pick of two tracks with "Mirror Man"
and "(Keep Feeling) Fascination" — which really wouldn't sound any more out
of place than "The Lebanon" — you'd at least have something resembling the
group's old standard. Fun fact: it was released three years before a very
different Sheffield band's Hysteria.
Despite the mis-steps and the length of time taken to make 'Hysteria',
despite the fact it isn't a progressive work, the songs are good enough if
not judged directly against the bands other work, which is really the only
fair way they should be judged. In such a spirit, we can say that 'I Love
You Too Much' is a sleak, catchy thing. 'Life On Your Own' was released as a
single and deserved to be. A good vocal and a thoughtful arrangement makes
this a nicely mellow and sunny pop moment of cool. On the otherhand, right
at the end of the album Human League clearly run out of steam including a
couple of moments of clear filler. 'Thirteen' is a five minute synth
instrumental without virtuosity or imagination. 'The World Tonight' sounds
like b-side material, simple as that. Anyway, 'Hysteria' spawned three top
twenty ( although no top ten ) hits and peaked at number three in the UK
album charts. It's a decent enough album but unfortunately happens to be far
worse than 'Dare' is. That in itself isn't a crime, but the next Human
League album would be.
