New Order - "Low-Life" Melody Maker Review

Blood Simple

New Order
Low-Life

THE contradictions, the confusions, the confessions continue.

"Low-Life" is New Order really, it's as deliberately basic as that. Those one-string sentimentalisms still stir the senses, those explosive dynamics still jolt complacency, that disco blast still sounds cheap and mechanical and yet thumps home, those lyrics still sting like a slap and sometimes embarrass. It’s all so minimal, it's mountainous.

Somehow, through a process of brutal attrition, New Order have established a cleaving purity. And remember all that Nazi business? Well, it’s not over yet, it's not that inappropriate. "Low-Life" functions with fascist intensity, shepherding the sympathies, every note honed for maximum impact. There's nothing on this record that isn't essential to its purpose and there's really no escaping its traumatic effect.

It uplifts, it begins to live a life of its own beyond calculation and maintains the New Order pedigree, trammels that individual furrow and stretches itself preposterously to the very extremes of its severely limited territory.

The tension talks volumes, screams through the structure, strains for release.

New Order have one song, we all know that. "Low-Life" just treats it with more variety, more care and, ultimately, more abandon than over before. From the cover (one of the best ever, full-facial black and whites blurred behind a frosted layer) to the damage done, "Low-Life" messes with the possibilities of reputation, toys with that one song yet refuses to relinquish its sturdy hold on all that's expected.

It adds, almost as if they're fooling with our faith. "Sooner Than You Think", "Subculture" and "Face Up" pursue each other over uncannily similar territory, each carved from a different substance - synths, sequencers, guitars; it barely matters, the movement's so intense.

With such exquisite control. New Order have even tossed in a disaster. "Love Vigilantes" is absurd, an appallingly naive self-parody, Sumner doo-doo-dooing through a stupid anti-war protest. This is New Order at their worst, forcing the point, saying too much, amputating possibilities of interpretation and achieving too litte.

But the rest of "Low-Life" boasts the most articulate sound since The Cocteau's "Treasure", elevating depression to ecstacy. "Elegia". a Morriconesque instrumental, builds predictably from fragility to strength, the dynamics emotional beyond language.

Elsewhere, Sumner's deliberately flat and erratic vocals are crucial - the dimension that warps the efficiency, the pain that cramps the perfection. "Face Up", the album's peak, straddles something obscenely jaunty until the chorus bayonets into the arteries of the song. "Oh how I cannot stand the thought of you" - it's typically blood simple, characteristically childish, strung out to an almost unbearable degree. Seldom can a song of loss have sounded so triumphant, the agonised victim gaining strength through the acknowledgement of valuable experience.

"Low-Life" has harnessed power, mastered motion and has started manoeuvres to annex melody into the masterplan. I can't think of anything I can't do with this record - it informs and illuminates so many emotions.

Resistance is low. New Order get stronger. They're coming. I'm invaded all over. It's a tender surrender.

STEVE SUTHERLAND