New Order - NME "Substance" Review

NME - POWER, CONVICTION, LIES!

NEW ORDER
Substance (Factory)
WE CHUCK words at New Order. Words like funereal and ethereal and classical and awesome. We treat their music religiously as if staring, open-eared before a mountainous terrain of rushing torrents and echoing valleys; as if their creations rise and fall and rise again while the humble human elements struggle to stand firm in a mightly synthesised soundscape. That sort of stuff.

Meanwhile they've packaged themselves almost anonymously. And they’ve offered us few explanations, few indications as to their collective states of mind. On stage they appear disinterested and distant; in interviews they behave like irresponsible tosspots, making it impossible to reconcile the people with the product.

So here we are - precisely ten years on from Joy Division's raw inception - at Fac 200. "Now that we've grown up together" as Bernard (Barney) Dicken (Sumner Albrecht sings in 'True Faith", it's time to reflect; to examine New Order's 'Substance (The Collected Singles 1980-1987)' to balance the present against the past.

To have raised themselves from the depths of despair in '80 at Curtis' demise - left like Doors without a Lizard King - and risen to the life-affirming peaks of last year’s ‘Perfect Kiss‘ and 'Subculture’ is some achievement, "Substance’ charts New Order’s course from the Joy Division-penned requiem 'Ceremony' (alas the prime mix is not here) through the world’s end emotions of 'Blue Monday' to the 'Low-Life' highlights and romance with dancefloors and charts. They've exorcised Curtis' ghost, and to their eternal credit, they've carried many a shadow-boxing, angst-ridden adolescent with them to this "land of love".

If along the way they've attracted a yob element, and if people - even in cerebral hermitages like NME - must still make pathetic jests about their moniker's origins, New Order have quietly side-stepped all this. They've responded in these singles, in four supremely atmospheric albums, and rather than ferment the death-cult, have destabilised it.

Those who still hold Factory in bizarrely high esteem - as if they're less money-grabbing than anyone else - will regard this compact disc-oriented compilation with the same disdain that greeted 'Closer' on CD. But these singles, back-to-back, almost offer a potted history of the 80's; of the relationship between man and machine in music; of the way Hook and Morris' rhythms, and Dicken's childlike voice, survive New Order's adventures in technology. Here only Kraftwerk can touch them.

Of course there are flaws. When New Order hit the heights -'Everything's Gone Green', even  the weakened mix of 'Temptation', 'Perfect Kiss', 'Subculture' - their traditionally simplistic (occasionally empty lyrics are imbued with almost mystical meaning. But  . . .when they plumb the depths of disco and approximate the sounds of Pet Shop Boys and thieves like The Cure or Hazel Dean (!), and when they again remix a thin idea like 'Confusion', New Order’s style becomes formula becomes parody.

However, even if there are moments- in the Stephen Hague-produced 'True Faith', in ‘Bizarre Love Triangle' - when their high standards are compromised in a forelock-tug towards commercialism, these compositions still remain as soul-stirring as anything of their ilk.

Obviously, 12 singles (plus B-sides and CD and double cassette) fail to offer a complete reflection of New Order’s work - Age Of Consent' from ‘Power, Corruption And Lies' or ’Elegia' from ’Low-Life’ would be here - but this substantial collection does demand words like funereal and classical and ethereal and awesome. Even in this sadly Smiths-split world, ‘Substance' warmly illustrates New Order's positive route, a counter-revolution against glumness, from Curtis to their current heat-warming brand of celebration.

‘Celebration'? Doctor, I feel a New Order song coming on...

Len Brown