GIVE HUMAN LEAGUE A CHANCE

They live in Sheffield. Because they like it there. Because it's ordinary but sort of esoteric at the same time, straightforward but not stupid, arty without being, you know, arty. A lot like their music.

I’m sitting in Philip Oakey and Joanne Catherall’s fetching front room (gray carpet, black blinds, lots of machines, fresh coffee) in a nice Sheffield suburb, having been picked up at the station (almost three hours from London) by Susanne Sulley, who’s sitting next to Joanne on the sofa. Philip, on the armchair, is quiet and knowing and wary; the women are positive and talkative—funny how they don’t write, just talk...or maybe not so funny when you think of it. Whatever, it’s the combination and the contradiction of all these elements—the male-female thing, the aware-naive thing, the human electronics, the ordinary esoteric that makes Human League the band it is.