New Order - NME "Thieves Like Us" Review

NEW ORDER: Thieves Like Us (Factory)

The little ray of sunshine who croons for New Order wants to get his Aryan finger out - every time I hear one of their gloomy, toe-tapping records it is patently obvious that the session has started without him and the band are doggedly plugging away, playing for time while they wait for the wee scallywag to show and then - when he finally arrives after three or four minutes of jig-by-numbers instrumental the scamp has the nerve to brazen it out, braying in that mournful send-for-a-priest-I-think-he's-going death bed moo, acting for all the world as though he's been there all the time!

Or... was it all just another fiendish plot all along? Making us wait on tenterhooks for the vocal to heighten tension and thus see Obersturmfuhrer Vilson's total world domination? I guess we will never know.

What I do know, however, is that New Order have achieved major commercial success because they are the only act around to have bridged the gap between bedsitland and clubland. They deal in monosyllabic self-pity, the Esperanto of the adolescent soul. They sound an awful lot - especially that wistful, yearning, all knowing, unbelievably prissy vocal - like Al 'Year of Da Cat' Stewart. But, never forget, they have their bad points too.