The Bristol Post published Human League at Bristol's Colston Hall; Review

The Human League, who played Bristol's Colston Hall on Monday night

For a short while during the Human Leagues packed Colston Hall show, frontman Philip Oakey comes close to self-parody.

Standing in the centre of a white tiered stage, in front of a giant screen pumping out sci-fi visuals, wearing a tightly-fitting Matrix-style suit and frowning with his immaculately-coiffed eyebrows, the 59-year-old singer chants recent tune Egomaniac.

The song is from their latest album, 2011s Credo, but seems completely new to many of the fans filling the venues stalls and balcony, who mostly nod along politely to this snatch of new material.

While some bands would run the risk of losing a crowds good will with this kind of move, the Human League manage to get away with it.

This is partly because Oakey looks like he appreciates the silly side of it all, flipping as he does between serious poses and knowing smiles with the audience.

But more importantly, its because the band spend the rest of the gig giving the crowd what they clearly want: the larger-than-life pop songs which propelled the band to fame in the first place.

As the night goes on, Oakey and long-serving backup singers Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley perform hit after hit with only a few detours to more recent fare. Eighties classics like the introspective Mirror Man, the political The Lebanon, and hypnotic the Love Action are all met with whoops.

But it is the bands international mega-hit Dont You Want Me which gets almost everyone on their feet, clapping and singing along after the first few keyboard stabs.

Oakey still sounds quite menacing when he sings Don't forget it's me who put you where you are now, and I can put you back down too to Catherall and Sulley who he famously plucked from a Sheffield night club.

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The Bristol Post published Human League at Bristol's Colston Hall; Review