OMD latest continues the winning streak they started with HISTORY OF MODERN (2010) and ENGLISH ELECTRIC (2013). THE PUNISHMENT OF LUXURY may be their best and most experimental release since 1983′s commercially undazzling, but artistically nuanced DAZZLE SHIPS, an album that showed that electro pop could manage electricity in new ways while succumbing to song. THE PUNISHMENT OF LUXURY may have lost some of their analog gravitas through digital sheen, but songs like the title track tackle consumerism and isolation in a catchy, thoughtful way. “Robot Man” may be the nadir here, but songs like “What Have we done”, “Isotype” “Kiss Kiss Kiss Bang Bang Bang” more than make up for it (the latter even emoting a hearty fuck you to conformity, etc.). To OMD this is a kind of electro blues, leavening what some my consider cliche with scorn. Thankfully THE PUNISHMENT OF LUXURY proves the forty years on OMD are certainly not an oldies act. Not many could claim that.
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