2005 11 12 New Order Guardian Brixton
New-found sensitivity from the student disco's old guard
New Order
Bernard Sumner is in a repentant mood. "We never used to care if our audiences had a good time," New Order's frontman admits. "But now we're older we've mellowed. We care." Traditionally, it is true, one approaches a New Order gig with some trepidation, anticipating mumbled in-jokes and tuning problems; maybe an onstage squabble; perhaps, as at this year's Glastonbury, the perverse omission of their best-loved song, Blue Monday. No other legendary band seems so compelled to deflate its own mystique.
But tonight is different. If a committee of New Order fans thrashed out their perfect setlist, this would probably be it: acknowledged hits (Bizarre Love Triangle), revered album tracks (Love Vigilantes), the cream of recent material (Turn) and some Joy Division classics (Transmission).
To the delight of long-running fans - the Academy's sloping floor is dappled with bald spots - they even encore with Joy Division's debut single, the taut, punky Warsaw. New Order find magic in contradictions. The likes of Temptation and Blue Monday (yes, they play it) are an implausibly perfect synthesis of shadowy introspection and communal euphoria: the bedsit and the disco. Although Peter Hook enjoys wielding his instrument like a machine-gunner strafing enemy positions, he's probably the tenderest bass player in rock. On Waiting for the Siren's Call, he shadows Sumner's vocal melody with tiptoeing delicacy.
You can tell how much Sumner is enjoying a performance by the volume of his whoops; tonight, they punctuate every song. Crystal, with its silly couplet about love being like honey and one's inability to buy it with money, becomes a pulse-pounding matter of life and death. As Love Will Tear Us Apart approaches climax, he roars "Come on!" so violently that Hook responds with a primeval growl, like a caveman or a bear. Rarely do New Order play with such passion and ferocity. The new, caring Sumner keeps asking if everyone is having a good time. He needn't worry.
· At Manchester Apollo on Monday. Box office: 0870 401 8000.
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