A Flock of Seagulls – Space Age Love Song

If you were to describe the pop culture of the 1980s in just one picture, you could do a lot worse than a pic of Liverpudlian quartet, A Flock of Seagulls. Their smorgasbord of outrageous haircuts made them instantly recognisable, though what’s surprising in retrospect is that their songs aren’t as readily well-known. In fact, many will recall Wishing (I Had a Photo of You), one of the most well-crafted songs of the decade; rather more will recognise I Ran, oddly not from its original use or radio play but its prominent inclusion in the Grand Theft Auto console game. For all this, their candle flickered briefly in the UK, with the top ten not overly troubled and most of the significant success coming in the US. Their 3 year (ish) stay in the limelight lead to an awful lot of downtime (the band will say they never split up but will no doubt say “hiatus”, one of the few times the word is used).

Now, a mere 34 years later, the original four members (how often does that happen?) have reconvened on record, admittedly to recycle their existing tracks, but this time with the added oomph of an orchestra (the Prague Philharmonic). Every man and his job seem to be doing this at the moment, from Ultravox to the Beach Boys, but it really does work a treat here, elevating the already existing grandeur to majestic new heights. The first track from the forthcoming album, Ascension, has now been released, “Space Age Love Song”, a track which deserved far more attention when it first came out, now getting (hopefully) the airtime it deserves. Check out those haircuts too. Wow.