1994 11 19 New Order "Best of" Melody Maker Review

Who is the most perfect singles band of all time? Abba? Smiths? Pet Shop Boys? Cure? No. That's N-O. For New Order. ANDREW MUELLER reckons so, and reveals his delayed ejaculation technique along the way. Image: Pat Pope

THE ECSTASY OF SAINT BERNARD

NEW ORDER
THE BEST OF NEW ORDER 
London 8285801-2-4/16 tks/71 mins

PROOF, if it were needed, that pop music is better than logic. Consider: this collection is, natch, a consummate work of art, a catalogue of genius, a bible of dreams and failure, the greatest story ever told, etcetera and amen. Consider further: said Babylon has been wrought by one amiable-looking chap with a well-thumbed rhyming dictionary, another who might have been thrown out of Hawkwind for being a bit unreconstructed, and two earnest, anonymous, Laura Ashley boffins. That Hook, George and Ringo are human we know: we've heard Revenge and The Other Two. Sumner, yet to put a foot anywhere astray of the shining path (Electronic are astonishing), has presumably been visited upon us by some benign supreme force. There again, he did write the clod-hopping lyric to "World (Price Of Love)", which is about the only moment here that significantly fails to waltz on clouds and go jousting with lances snapped off vapour trails.

Having worked up to speed, then, to soothe the savage breast of the outraged trainspotter contingent: yes, three of the 16 songs here have been remixed, but panic not. The version or "True Faith", still a peerless accompaniment to life's moments of unexpected triumph, makes me suspicious that Stephen Hague banked his cheque with the same sense of self-congratulation I used to get from dodging one particularly dim editor by earnestly agreeing all her suggested corrections and then successfully re-submitting the same piece. The new "Bizarre Love Triangle" has been shored up a bit in places, sounds none the worse for it and remains pretty much the last word in devotional adoration. Anyone who can pick the difference between the new "Round And Round" and the old should certainly get out more.

Everything else should already be the rock on which your church is built. Not even the sainted Smiths, Cure and Pet Shop Boys have equalled New Order's facility for the perfect single, that lightning strike of immortal transience that can make three minutes seem like a blissful eternity. Sumner's knack of sounding always faintly distracted, as if while singing his hymns to the battered spirit of romance he's pondering the reorganisation of Man U's midfield or struggling to avoid orgasm (and girls, you'd be appalled if you but knew what a common combination this is), has the odd effect of making his musings all the more moving. When he closes the gorgeous "Regret" with "I guess that's what they all say, just before they fall apart", you can almost hear him shrug. The man's nothing less than the Nureyev of wearied indifference.

Elsewhere, New Order's periodic swerves into the realms of weirdness are well represented. Witness the chorus of bleating sheep at the end of the furious techno squall "Fine Time", the bewildering should-have-been-a-country-song of "1963" and the rap in the middle of greatest football song ever "World In Motion", which remains the only recorded instance of that galumphing fraud John Barnes doing anything remotely useful in an England shirt. 

Really though, you know all the words already, and your hearts have been beating to these ridiculously perfect songs for years. "Thieves Like Us", "Shellshock", "Vanishing Point", "Touched By The Hand Of God"... I can remember where I was the first time I heard all of them, and they still find new corners to haunt a thousand plays later. "The Best Of New Order": the soundtrack to the film of the Book Of Revelations, and Christmas in November.