Travelogue, released in 1980 through Virgin Records, is the second album by English Synth-Pop group The Human League, and the final one by their initial "Mk. I" incarnation. Following the commercial failure of Reproduction and the concurrent rise of Gary Numan as electronic music's leading non-Kraftwerk act, the band sought for greater public appeal with their follow-up. Not wanting to sacrifice their artistic ethos, they attempted to craft a middle ground between their earlier Avant-Garde Music and the kind of radio-friendly material that brought Numan to the forefront, using the Holiday '80 EP as a test run for this approach. It did well enough to get the band on Top of the Pops, and the band released the full follow-up album in its wake, touring the UK the same month of its release to further boost their profile.
The effort seemed to pay off at first, with Travelogue debuting at No. 16 on the UK Albums chart— compared to Reproduction, which hadn't charted at all— but sales dropped off soon after, leaving Virgin Records hesitant to promote it. This mix of low success and low record company faith sowed the seeds of immense Creative Differences within the band, with lead singer Philip Oakey favoring an even more commercial direction in the vein of Numan and other better-performing groups. Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh meanwhile wanted to stick to the experimental style that they'd started off with, ultimately walking out on the band as a result.
Their manager, Bob Last, would budge in to help the three clear the legal dust in the wake of this move: Oakey, the only member of the group who didn't explicitly quit, was given the rights to the Human League name and catalog, while Ware and Marsh were allowed to continue without Oakey as Heaven 17, recruiting Glenn Gregory as a replacement singer. Since Oakey inherited the band name, he also inherited its debts— including the money the band owed Virgin and the fall 1980 tour they'd booked to support Travelogue. Oakey would hastily cobble together a new lineup, forming the "Mk. II" incarnation of the band. It was with this new configuration that the band would finally achieve their Breakthrough Hit with Dare the following year; Virgin would reissue Travelogue in the wake of the album's success, with the latter selling well enough off the heels of Dare to be certified gold by the BPI in 1982.
Travelogue was supported by one single: a Cover Version of Mick Ronson's "Only After Dark".
Tracklist:
Side One- "The Black Hit of Space" (4:11)
- "Only After Dark"note (3:50)
- "Life Kills" (3:07)
- "Dreams of Leaving" (5:49)
- "Toyota City" (3:24)
Side Two
- "Crow and a Baby" (3:43)
- "The Touchables" (3:21)
- "Gordon's Gin"note (2:58)
- "Being Boiled" (4:21)
- "WXJL Tonight" (4:40)
With one trope on the town and a gleam in an eye of red:
- Breather Episode:
- "Only After Dark" is a simple ode to the nightlife, situated between the Cosmic Horror Story "The Black Hit of Space" and the vivid description of dying in "Life Kills".
- "Toyota City" is a calm, quiet instrumental that closes out side one and acts as a reprieve between the bleakness of both "Dreams of Leaving" and "Crow and a Baby".
- Cosmic Horror Story: "The Black Hit of Space" describes the narrator purchasing a futuristic single that turns out to be an Eldritch Abomination, taking over the universe and becoming cosmically omnipresent after being played.
- Cover Version: The album features covers of both "Only After Dark" by David Bowie sideman Mick Ronson and the Gordon's Gin advertising jingle by Jeff Wayne.
- The Dictatorship: The human-crow hybrid in "Crow and a Baby" is implied to lead one, with the song describing them as a megalomaniac who has "one wing on the town", leads a campaign against all fathers, and threatens dissenters with death.
- Downer Ending: The album closes out with "WXJL Tonight", which describes the decline and death of a radio station.
- Eldritch Abomination: The titular record in "The Black Hit of Space" is depicted as one, annihilating all competitors, distorting its image into "a doughnut shape with the label on the outside rim," freezing time as it plays, and ultimately becoming an omnipresent entity.
- Freudian Excuse: The human-crow hybrid in "Crow and a Baby" wishes to eliminate all the world's fathers because they resent the fact that their own father was a crow, which led to their unnatural existence.
- Half-Human Hybrid: The main character in "Crow and a Baby" is born from an affair between a male crow and a female human. Their resentment towards their hybrid nature leads them to instigate a pogrom against all fathers in the world.
- Hard Truth Aesop: "Dreams of Leaving" features an unorthodox but prescient message for its time in the form of "racism isn't just Apartheid, it's also the xenophobia and fear of 'them taking our jobs' right here in the west."
- Heavy Meta: "The Black Hit of Space" is about the Human League putting out a Synth-Pop song so ahead of its time that it dominates the music scene and the public consciousness to an inescapable degree, which incidentally is exactly what happened with Dare the following year.
- Here We Go Again!: "Dreams of Leaving" sees the protagonist escape South Africa, only to still face anti-black racism and xenophobia in his new home, motivating him to immigrate again to a country further north because he heard that the folks there are kinder to foreigners.
- Instrumentals: "Toyota City" and "Gordon's Gin".
- New Sound Album: The album is more accessible and fleshed-out than Reproduction without sacrificing its avant-garde, borderline industrial ethos.
- One-Word Title: Travelogue.
- Protest Song:
- "Dreams of Leaving" is an anti-apartheid song in its first act and a broader anti-racism, anti-xenophobia song in its second act.
- "Being Boiled"... sorta. Read literally, the song is a condemnation of the silk industry, which involves boiling silkworms to death to harvest their cocoons (hence the song title), though it can just as easily be read as metaphorical in a number of other ways, from the perils of capitalist exploitation as a whole to general abuse.
- Rearrange the Song: The Travelogue version of "Being Boiled", originally released on the Holiday '80 EP, is a more fleshed-out re-recording of the band's debut single from 1978. The new version is more layered and more aggressive, making use out loud, brassy synths that diverge from the 1978 version's minimalism.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The human-crow hybrid in "Crow and a Baby" is described as bearing "a gleam in an eye of red," complimenting their villainous, authoritarian nature and murderous intent.
- Shout-Out:
- The album cover repurposes the 1962 photograph Sunset Silhouettes Trapper and Dogs Crossing Saganagons Lake, Ontario
, originally published in National Geographic. - "The Black Hit of Space" describes the titular single as having "a futuristic cover lifted straight from Buck Rogers." The end of the song also namedrops James Burke, creator and host of the science documentary series Connections.
- The album cover repurposes the 1962 photograph Sunset Silhouettes Trapper and Dogs Crossing Saganagons Lake, Ontario
- Spoken Word in Music: The final verse of "The Black Hit of Space" is spoken by Phil Oakey rather than being sung.
- Trrrilling Rrrs: In "Crow and a Baby", the band members consistently trill the sole "R" that appears in the chorus ("with one wing on the town, and a gleam in an eye of red").
- Updated Re-release: CD and digital releases of the album include the rest of the Holiday '80 EP, the non-album singles "I Don't Depend on You" and "Boys and Girls", and their B-sides. Together with the bonus tracks on the Reproduction CD, it totals up to cover the entire pre-Dare era of the bandnote .
