2002 12 08 New Order "Retro" Review, The Observer

 https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2002/dec/08/features.review117

New Order's temple - or tomb

Tempted by the new box set? Be warned: appearances can deceive

Kitty Empire

It was hardly an orthodox marketing strategy when New Order were interviewed last month about Retro, their forthcoming box set. 

'What can you say about a fucking box set?' mused singer Bernard Sumner. Drummer Stephen Morris said: 'I buy a box set every Christmas. I never play them. They just sit there looking nice.' Bassist Peter Hook, the band's loosest cannon, went further, suggesting the band should release four blank CDs in shrink-wrap. No one would be the wiser, he argued, since no one ever opened their box sets. 

The resale value of box sets was higher, he explained, if they stayed in pristine condition. How was he so certain? Hooky collects model cars. With Matchbox racers and boxed music, the same principle held: no one in their right mind ever actually played, or played with them. This exchange revealed a cavalier attitude to product promotion that will have caused a few people at the record company to claw at their hair, even as it made New Order fans smile. How very New Order: cantankerous, wry, self-sabotaging. 

But for once, an awkward sliver of truth had emerged from the glad-handed swirl of publicity that normally surrounds such releases. New Order exposed the contradiction in the box set's 3-D heft. Box sets are not records. They are objects: primers, bookends, tombstones, perhaps even investments. They make showy presents, which is why record stores fill great cities of display units with them, come the first leaf-fall. 

Like tombstones, box sets come at the end. They are serious. A box around a band's work implies it is worthy of lavish packaging. They excite the completist rather than the giddy fan; the collector, rather than the music lover. They exist at a dark crossroads where music turns into archaeology. 

As such, they should arouse suspicion. Boxes invite reviewers to wax eloquent about a band's career. 

These little boxes advance a version of history (box sets are always 'definitive') that can distort the truth. Take the most absurd box set this year, the Camper Van Beethoven five-CD limited edition Santa Cruz Years compendium. As a music bore, I can reveal that this West Coast band of the early Eighties made a minuscule indentation in the pop psyche with one indie semi-hit 'Take the Skinheads Bowling'. The gift-seeking lay person might see this four-album-plus-bonus-live-CD smorgasbord and conclude that CVB were up there with the Beach Boys. 

New Order, meanwhile, really did define pop music for a decade. But their box, too, suffers from the format's malaises.Before we decide whether the New Order box set is any good or not, we must ask, is there such a thing as a good box set? A satisfying box set will work as a primer, a tombstone, a hits package and a record you actually want to put on. Critically, it should also include rarities to add value to the band's catalogue, but not so many that the neophyte goes spare. To wit: the Beach Boys' Good Vibrations box set (hits, some apocrypha) is superior to the Pet Sounds Sessions (endless alternative takes). 

Perhaps it's a byproduct of having two X chromosomes, but I have never bought a box set, other than as a present for male friends. However, I do use and endorse one: the Nuggets box set, a four-CD feast of obscure, ragged psychedelic rock from the American Sixties compiled by Patti Smith's guitarist Lenny Kaye. It's a primer and a party, all in one. 

It's hard to pinpoint whom Retro is for. It had a troubled birth. It's, y'know, pretty good. It could hardly fail to be, given what a sublime band New Order were, but the band had little to do with its compilation. Box sets are record company toys, repackaging their chattels' back catalogue in evermore inventive ways. Retro features four CDs, compiled by journalists and fellow musicians (Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, M People's Mike Pickering) that divides New Order's riches into four seams: Pop, Fan, Club (Pickering's selection of re-mixes) and Live (Gillespie's run-down of live cuts). Fans on a New Order website grumbled so much when the details of the box set were announced - not enough rarities, you see - that a fifth CD was hastily added, of harder-to-find material, such as the full version of 'Elegia'. 

Retro, then. It's, y'know, all right. For a Christmas present. But what of the cellophane? I contacted a Manchester record dealer to determine whether the plastic on the outside is as important as the plastic on the inside. He rarely played his box sets either, he admitted. As a merchant, he was most interested in good quality original releases of a band's records, or scarce promo copies. He said would pay slightly over the odds for a New Order box set in the weeks before release, but the plastic wrap was neither here nor there. 

· To order Retro (London Records) for £29.99, call the Observer Music Service on 0870 066 7813. Prices include p&p