rock: playing totally engaging, satisfying music without the facility of the lead guitar". Red Starr of Smash Hits said, "An odd album from an odd duo, sometimes briskly clean synthesiser pop, sometimes strange and intriguing electronic excursions... Buy it and learn to love it." Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark was hailed as a superior record within the contemporary synth-pop movement. In an enthusiastic review for The Face, Adrian Thrills contrasted OMD's "melodic immediacy" to the "nauseatingly self-conscious futuristic android pop of the [Gary] Numan/[John] Foxx automation acolytes", and declared the album to have "far more depth" than the Human League's Reproduction. Simon Ludgate of Record Mirror observed an emotional resonance that he felt was typically absent from synth-pop, while recommending the album for its "insidious rhythm and melody", and imagery that "will change at each play". In The Age, John Teerds viewed the record as "perhaps the best synthesiser-based music to emerge [in 1980]." It became the UK's 60th-best selling album that year. In a retrospective appraisal, Trouser Press referred to Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark as "a demonstration of stylish electro-pop" with "a knack for melodies and hooks". Ned Raggett at AllMusic said of the record, "Its music is wonderful... there's both a variety and ambition present that never overreaches itself." Raggett also had praise for Saville's "brilliant die-cut cover". Pitchforks Scott Plagenhoef wrote that the album's "adventurous blend of drama and pathos—and its nods toward the more rhythmic end of Krautrock—elevated [OMD] above the [Brian] Eno/Kraftwerk template clung to by many of their peers." Dave Segal of The Stranger described the record as "a masterpiece of enchanting melodies, fascinating rhythms, and cherubic vocals". Legacy Joseph Burnett of The Quietus identified Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark as "one of the key early British synth-based pop/rock albums"; PopMatters critic Max Shand wrote that its "synthesizer bleeps disclos[ed] the way electronic music could avoid traditional song structures while still generating something buoyant." In addition to being named by contemporary reviewers as one of the finest records of 1980, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark has appeared in subsequent lists of the year's best albums, with Radio X ranking it no. 1. Classic Pop readers voted it the 71st-greatest album of the 1980s, while the magazine's editorial staff ranked it 26th among the decade's best debut albums. KCMP listeners placed it at no. 291 in the "893 Essential Debut Albums". Orchestral Manoeuvres in