1989 08 26 New Order NME

ROAD TO JOY

A CONSUMERS GUIDE TO NEW ORDER

• NEW ORDER are unique. Despite being together for nine years and existing at the heart of the Manchester/Factory/Hacienda gossip mill, they’ve managed to keep their rise to world domination relatively free of scandal, turmoil and litigation. Their story can only really be told through their music. Here DANNY KELLY offers a critical release-by-release look at their output.

‘CEREMONY’ (Feb ’81) ‘EVERYTHING’S GONE GREEN’ (Sept ’81)

‘MOVEMENT’ (Nov ’81)

‘Ceremony’ was both a chillingly fine debut and not a debut at all. For their first great leap into an unknown future, New Order roped themselves to their past. Rhythmically intense yet oddly, coldly, spacious, the songwriting credit read ‘Joy Division’ and Barney’s vocals eerily mimicked those of Ian Curtis.

His guitar, and Peter Hook’s ever more idiosyncratic and muscular bass served to intensify the cathedral grandeur and almost touchable melancholy of Joy Division’s best moments, but offered no clue as to where the new group would, or indeed could, go. And if the freezing swirl of the B-side, ‘In A Lonely Place’ wasn't a farewell lament for Curtis, then it sure as hell should have been!

‘Ceremony’s packaging (especially the 7 inch’s embossed-bronze effort) began the tradition that would see New Order’s Peter Saville-designed sleeves established as the state of the art pinnacle to which others would have to aspire.

Eight months later that fact was reinforced when the 7 inch of 'Everything’s Gone Green’ was issued in a bewildering array of different coloured sleeves. The record itself - NO’s familiar dark, crystal rock chivvied along by Gillian’s dance-paced keyboards - allowed the first glimpses of the road they were to follow.

Which is more than can be said for ‘Movement’, a hugely disappointing opening LP. Listless, unsure and (with the exception of ‘Dreams Never End’) painfully undynamic, it sounds like a fifth album rather than a first, like something coming to an end. What did terminate was the band’s association with long-time producer Martin Hannett who they blamed for the record’s clinging dullness. The subsequent decision to produce themselves - for the time being at least- was to prove a masterstroke...

‘TEMPTATION’ (May ’82)

‘BLUE MONDAY’ (Mar ’83) ‘POWER CORRUPTION AND LIES’ (Mar ’83)

The first fruits of their new control overt heir own work, and of their increasing obsession with studio technology, was ‘Temptation’, a matchlessly beautiful record that married the song's basic rock structure to an electro dancebeat that was now prominent, and would soon be dominant.

This single also marks Barney’s emergence as a singer from under the shadow of Ian Curtis - plaintive, almost undemonstrative, yet wholly affecting. ‘Temptation’ is a summation, the point of perfection of a certain strain of New Order. They would never sound quite this way again.

And after ‘Blue Monday’, nothing would sound quite the same again. What else is left to be said about the biggest selling 12 inch of all time, the record that rocket-launched New Order internationally, and changed the way rock ears listened to, and heard, hip-hop? Only that even now - the fascistic brutality of the rhythm, made bearable by Barney’s strangely baleful bleatings - it can still shock. A quantum leap, a shattering of moulds, an immense bloody landmark of a record...

After it, the LP that followed within weeks could have been an enormous anti-climax; but ‘Power, Corruption And Lies' is the first great New Order album. Throttling back from the crushing momentum of ‘Blue Monday’ (but often employing much the same sound textures), the technology allows spaces into which harmony, melody and less numbing noises can gratefully steal. The result is that much of the record - in particular the glowering ‘Age Of Consent’ - is classic NO.

‘CONFUSION’ (Aug ’83)

‘THIEVES LIKE US’ (Apr ’84)

‘THE PERFECT KISS’ (May ’85) ‘LOWLIFE’ (May ’85}

Has any record ever been more aptiy named than ‘Confusion’? ‘Blue Monday’ had made New Order the darlings of the New York dance elite; it seems to have gone to their heads. Surrendering themselves to the mercies of Arthur Baker (one of a series of ‘hip’ - usually dance - producers they've employed to bounce their ideas off, with wildly varying degrees of success), they created, if that’s the word, an endless slop of unfocussed, dance-by-the-yard tedium. A case of the machinery sweeping aside the artistry, of the tail wagging the dog.

And yet, within months, that balance had been miraculously recovered, the creative equilibrium between technology and humanity restored to quite stunning effect. ‘Thieves Like Us’ is ludicrously daring, less a song than a concerto, the dark night of its portentously looming four minute intro broken by the dawning of Barney’s achingly poignant hymn to the heating possibilities of love. A work that utterly mocks the pathetic tininess of most contemporary rock, it would be the last true New Order gem for over two years.

‘The Perfect Kiss’, and the ‘Lowlife’ album from which it sprang, are NO ordinaire, competent water-treading. The exception is the LP’s opener, ‘Love Vigilantes’, a weirdly compelling near country rocker that comes complete with solid gold Bismillah! lyrics and a tinkling riff so good that lan Broudie stole it wholesale for The Lightning Seeds current hit!’

‘SUB-CULTURE’ (Aug ’85) ‘SHELLSHOCK’ (Mar ’86)

‘STATE OF THE NATION’ (Aug ’86) ‘BIZARRE LOVE TRIANGLE’ (Nov ’86)

‘BROTHERHOOD’ (Sept ’86)

New Order’s grey period. While other groups might have killed to make records like these - especially 'State Of The Nation’ - they are, in truth, blandly average NO fare.

Fussily produced by Shep Pettibone and John Robie, they wallow in a welter of inappropriate dance tackle; the 12 inch of ‘Sub-culture’ in particular seems to last forever. ‘Brotherhood’ is strange, a gnarled, unapproachable thing that, in spite of the presence of stage favourite ‘Every Little Counts', is as near to stagnation as this determinedly restless band ever came.

‘TRUE FAITH’ (Jul ’87)

‘TOUCHED BY THE HAND OF GOD’ (Dec ’87)

And suddenly they’re a pop group! The comparisons between New Order and the Pet Shop Boys were already stale by the time PSB’s producer Stephen Hague was drafted in. And whatever the motivations for the liaison, the results were as might have been expected. ‘True Faith’ was (depending on your point of view) a refining, or a watering down, of New Order’s more jagged inclinations and was as radio friendly as any band including Peter Hook is ever likely to get. A giant hit. Whether it was great New Order is still a matter for debate.

‘Touched By The Hand Of God’, however, was undoubtedly the business, though it failed to crash the charts as True Faith’ had done. There is still a smoothness about the sound, but New Order added a sense of widescreen drama, a hint of something truly epic. When they make the film of the band’s rise to global pre-eminence, this will be the theme...

‘SUBSTANCE’ (Sep ’87)

‘BLUE MONDAY ’88’ (Apr ’88)

More than a Greatest Hits, less than the full story, ‘Substance’ is a glaring spotlight on NO’s cruise across the ’80s. The CD version's 24 full-length mixes remorselessly point up the two faces of New Order; the unmatched melding of grace and power, delicacy and bollocks and the lapses into half-baked self indulgence. The A-sides-only vinyl version, though, is still a fairly essential purchase.

Did ‘Blue Monday' need lots of ghostly swirly bits added to it? No.

‘FINE TIME’ (Nov ’88) ‘TECHNIQUE’ (Jan ’89)

‘ROUND & ROUND’ (May ’89)

Aceeid-drenched and an atypical harbinger of the album to come, 'Fine Time’ was New Order’s most uncompromisingly dancey single since ‘Confusion’ and yet another indication of their determination to keep abreast of the pulsebeat. Oddly then, the LP it presaged is, sonically at least, their most conservative. Mind you, it’s also their best...

‘Technique’ is, in every sense of the word, brilliant, an inexhaustibly consistent flux of shiny, shifting rock and Barney’s most emotional, realistic, singing to date. What some feel it lacks in adventure or sheer force is more than compensated for by the quality of the songs; ‘All The Way’, ‘Run’ and ‘Dream Attack' are as good as the very best they’ve come up with. Perfection is a dangerous word to bandy about, but Technique’ comes close. It’s one of the records by which ’80s rock will be measured in years to come; it won’t be found wanting.

AROUND THE WORLD

Factory is not CBS. New Order’s music, therefore, has not seeped into the outside world in quite the orderly fashion that might have happened with big bucks backing. The consequence has been such fine oddities as 'Bizarre Love Triangle’ on A&M in Spain, ‘Touched By The Hand Of God’ on Rough Trade in Germany, 'Everything’s Gone Green’ on something called Base in Italy.

Some overseas issues, of course (like Factory Benelux’s ‘Murder’/ 'Thieves Like Us’ coupling), were imported into Britain by the containerioad: others, like the Polish issue of ‘Blue Monday’ were rarer than poultry dentists. The collectors market in this country is thriving. And expensive.

The situation with American releases has been more rational than the European hoopla. In November’82 a mini album comprising ‘Temptation’, ‘Mesh’, ‘Procession’, ‘Hurt’ and ‘Everything’s Gone Green’ was put out in the USA and Canada; ‘Confusion’ came out on the New York based Streetwave label, and since then all subsequent New Order releases have been on Quincy Jones’ Qwest.

For completist NO junkies, this has created two types of highly desirable goodies: the stream of special promotional 12 inches for US radio stations, and, more recently, cassette versions of New Order 45s.

BITS AND PIECES

Wilful, perfectionist and masters/ mistresses of their own destiny, New Order have kept a tight rein on their output. For a band of their longevity, there are surprisingly few records knocking about other than the Factory catalogue outlined here. Besides the two Peel Sessions issued on Strange Fruit (‘Turn The Heater On’/‘We All Stand’/Too Late’/‘5-8-6’ and 'Truth’/‘Senses’/ ‘ICB' /'Dreams Never End’) there are just a few choice items knocking around...

At the Hacienda Christmas party in 1981, guests received a flexi disc comprising ‘We Will Rock You’ and 'Ode To Joy’.

... Another flexi, this time a ten inch effort was issued to promote their tour of America with Echo And The Bunnymen in 1986; the New Order track is a CD version of ‘Shame Of The Nation’.

... In 1986 an ‘exclusive remix’ of ‘Sub-culture’ appeared on an EP given away with Record Mirror.

And that, until the 14 versions of the next single from ‘Technique’ descend upon us, is that.