NEW ORDER'S LOW LIFE @ 40

A rapid fire snare intro leads to a full band assault, topped with the same melodica that helped us grind through In a Lonely Place. But the grind has left, replaced with a bouncing energy and sweet lead vocal. The story of the song is the surprise return of a soldier to a wife who's been told he's been killed in action. 

Next is Perfect Kiss. Some deft electronics before the riff bursts in and the story of a self-destructive friend and his tragic end could be about Ian Curtis or the litany of deaths reported from AIDS in the mid-80s. The chorus about believing in a land of love and a land above have a frail religiosity to them, rendering the rest of the tale sombre. The perfect kiss of the title is declared the kiss of death in the final line. This is supported by a structure that goes from a bright dance arrangement in the verses to a more intense chord backing for the choruses and then a passionate rushing chase with the opening riff developed. By this time New Order were releasing their singles on the albums but adding the value of different mixes or even perofmances. The twelve inch single version of Perfect Kiss adds a zoo of extra effects both naturally recorded and electronically created and it extends the rushing conclusion to an orgasmic effect, playing it again and again until a final descent in the bass and a baby's cry. We don't get that here (you can hear it on the Substance album) but the song, even constrained, still yields power.

The video of this song (directed by Jonathon Demme) was presented as the bend playing it in a studio which, right or wrong, was convincing. Around the room there were doors with frosted windows. In one of those a silouhuette of a short haired man was lightly moving to the rhythm. This was widely believed to refer to Ian Curtis, as a tip of the hat by some accounts or an outright ghost caught on camera by others. 

This Time of Night used to be announced by Bernard Sumner at live shows as Pumped Full of Drugs. A strident electro arrangement with a mournful lead vocal by Bernard whose using the lower end of his range. It tells of a destructive relationship wherein the love that began it has dried to a husk and the rest is mechanical routine. The second half of the song, under an insistent keyboard figure, is a lengthy plea from the victim to the abuser to cease but this is couched in a crippling co-dependance. It fades without conclusion.

Sunrise starts with a thick, dark, and slow figure on the synthesiser. Peter Hook's bass riff enters with urgency, bringing the rest of the band in with a galloping rush. Large dramatic chords bring thunder between the verses. The pained lyric tells of an authority who might hear every petition given them but refuses to respond. Is this a path to atheism through personal agony. Perhaps it's another abusive relationship. The cruciality and pace of the teller's frustration continue in the instrumental conclusion, itself ending with a fragmented guitar delay. A whimper not a bang. End of side one.

Elegia is an instrumental that could be a horror movie theme. Minor key arpeggios creep up from the silence. A chorused guitar provides a counter figure. The arrangement thickens and progresses through different expressions of the same ground like a Baroque chiccone. It does outstay its welcome if you're waiting for a vocal but it's a fine side opener on an album dedicated to making grave statements through bright and shining electronics.

Sooner Than You Think is a story from touring. The arrangment is more big electronics and small guitar skirmishes. Is it a road romance gone wrong or, more generally, impressions of the culture and lifestyle of the country being toured? Possibly the least affecting track on the album.

Subculture begins with a beautiful cinematic riff in a harpsichord-like synth voice. Over a Georgio Morroder-style synth bass throb, Bernard coos lines about walking in the dark, talking in his sleep, solitude and social life. "What do I get out of this?" he asks. "I always try. I always miss." This could be the lament of every Joy Division fan who went to a party in the '80s. It's a compelling song that is never allowed to burst into histrionics to sound self-tragic. This was a single, though, and the twelve inch was a massive overproudction of this version with female backing vocals played on a sampler and big instrumental breaks. I like bits of both but, for the honesty in the lyric, I would always prefer this one on the album with its plainer telling. It really does feel like its under the culture.

Face Up crashes in with the kind of blinding brightness that the band would charge into headlong from here onward. In a Lonely Place gets a whole line to itself in this song about about a breakup. "Oh I cannnot bear the thought of you." That line isn't as negating as it first appears. After the disintegration of a relationship the very thought of the other can be agonising while any of the initial love is morphing from passion to torture. The song appropriately ends on a fade and points to the rest of the band's initial career.

To listen to the first few New Order albums is to take a moment wondering how they got from one to the next without a smoother transition. From Movement's Martin Hannet-dominated helming that made it sound like Closer II rather than the new start the band were trying for to the piping melodica at the start of this set there seems only the vaguest continuity. The thing to glue them aurally together is to listen to the singles which do speak of more gradual changes, making a smoother curve. From the Joy Division accredited Ceremony/In a Lonely Place, though Everything's Gone Green, Blue Monday, Cofusion and Thieves Like Us, we get a band neither abandoning their initial dark punk attitude nor jealously preserving it. There is a clear progression in the trek from guitar based rock to the heavy electronics of the mid-80s. This would later form a rift but for now, the band had found a sound of its own.

Peter Saville was still directing the band's cover art and, here, broke with his own tradition of concept-laden work to a more conventional representation of the band with photos created with a Polaroid camera. It was the only time the likenesses of the band had appeared on their cover art and, typically, it was unconventional (if appropriate). Percussionist Steve Morris was the first face you saw and keyboardist Gillian Gilbert was the last, Hooky and Bernard went inside. This was alterable with tracing paper and adjustable photographs (maybe I'm confusing that with the CD release, I never had this on vinyl).

By the mid-80s, fans and casual listeners alike could expect change within a slow curve from New Order. If anyone still asked them in interviews about Ian Curtis they would reduce their responses and move on to the next question. Low Life took them beyond even the contrary pull of things like Blue Monday which seemed to harbour the same dour concerns as anything from Joy Division but was clear about forging ahead with the technology. The songs feel more crafted and the overall brightness of the music never gets too samey (as it threatened to do on the previous set Power Corruption and Lies). It was the sound of a band with a past who only wanted to talk about the future. 

1983 @ 40: POWER, CORRUPTION AND LIES - NEW ORDER

Power, Corruption and Lies took New Order further into their emerging identity as a dance band with an edge. If that sounds dismissive and trivialising, it shouldn't. The band had struggled to put some distance between their illustrious early years. The first single even had the Joy Division by line and the album Movement felt like music that couldn't quite come unstuck from the last thing the band had done. The singles were the thing. Procession, Everything's Gone Green, Temptation and the stunner Blue Monday moved solidly into dance music, as much in stylistic debt to Georgio Moroder as Kraftwerk. When the next album came around, even if every other interview they did brought the old band back up, anyone with a persistent longing had to admit they had left that station.

Age of Consent's bright and catchy bass riff and keyboard patterns light up the room. Even Bernard's words about a failure of communication in a relationship sounded happy if you didn't listen to the lyric. And, yes, you could tap your toes or do the hip shake jerk all afternoon. If the funereal We All Stand bring back memories of Closer the arrangement is still sparser and lighter than it would have been. The mood is eerie rather than depressing. The Village brings back the brightness. "Our love is like the flowers," sings Bernard over busy and happy rhythms and textures that were fast becoming signature, guitar and keyboard tickles.

Notably absent from the production is the legendary figure of Martin Hannett. What he would have made of any of this is the stuff of guesses. The band took charge of production. When the joy of The Village fades into the mostly rhythmic introduction to 5 8 6 we can't imagine the old team adding atmosphere. This fades into the main body of the song which emerges from a low rumble into a busy electronic shuffle that sounds like someone tinkered a little with the Blue Monday midi programming. This, like all the songs on the old side one, allows textures and moods to speak more forwardly than individual songs and that plays perfectly well, even with the slower moments.

Side two brings us the open window on a summer day of Your Silent Face which begins with a synthesiser pattern so effortless and soothing you feel as though you're floating when it comes on. This opens on to a huge electronic strings chord progression that feels like a royal procession. Bernard's thinner melodica (haunting on In a Lonely Place) pleases. His vocal is calm and mid range. The strange lyrics report an experience that has left someone either apathetic or traumatised but beyond communication. At first the line, "why don't you piss off," sounds contemptuous, a cheap joke at the end of a hard won lyric. But the more I hear it the less I think it's the song's narrator and more the one who had the dark experience. This might belie the beauty of the musical arrangement (the closest, incidentally, that they ever got to sounding like Kraftwerk) but whatever personal motivation for the words the tension between the weary voice and the sublime grandeur of the music always compels me to either stop what I'm doing and give it all the attention I have or stop it and play it when I can listen only to it.

Ultraviolence plays like a disco march without the keyboards. The lyrics seem to bear the title out for once, with imagery of assault and consoling advice to move past a traumatic memory. The impersonality of the arrangement and subdued vocal add a creepy air and feel like a memory that encases the one recalling. gives me the shivers every time I hear it.

Ecstasy is mostly instrumental with a processed, robotic voice chanting something unintelligible as well as a lot of whispering. The strident dance groove is like  5 8 6 and might as well evoke a intoxication as just plain ol' dancing. 

The album ends on Leave Me Alone which has the now familiar New Order interplay between a big loping chorused bass and plinking guitar riff on the high frets that so many bands o'er the globe lifted wholesale. Bernard's words are melancholy, evoking failure of communication. To an exhausted person, everyone looks weary. Still, there's a lovely intrigue about: "but for these last few days, leave me alone." 

As with Movement you could  go through the words and the way the music sounds and make a case for the continued haunting of Ian Curtis over this band. It would be years before they could be heard in their own right. However, this time the band offered a constantly developing approach that would take them to moments of inspiring greatness. If this record sounds a little too much like mood over songwriting it might simply be a desire to sound as candid as they could. Peter Saville's artwork is a triumph, a lush painting of a bouquet interrupted by digital coding, keeping things both beautiful and always a little disturbing. 

And that works well by being subtle. This was not the new band's Unknown Pleasures, it was the state of things as they were. As with Movement, they left the big hit single off the album so it couldn't diminish what was there. What was there was something shared by other significant artists at the end of the free wheeling post punk years before so much of it was absorbed by a hungry mainstream. There was enough beauty here for a few car commercials, for sure, but too much murky shade for the big bucks world. Ok, so the next single after this was one song mixed four times which did not feel like fan service in 1983. But if you had this LP that might have given you a secret smile.

1981@40: MOVEMENT - NEW ORDER

So, your band did well locally and in a very short time amassed a nationwide following which followed you through a rapid musical development and then,just as you were about to conquer America which was waiting for you, your singer takes his ball back and you can't play anymore, well you don't feel like it on the day. Led Zeppelin had disbanded after their drummer left (for similar reasons) and the trio left behind in Joy Division were still young and well liked as musicians which would have let them walk into any band they wanted without a scratch on JD's legacy. Instead they did something right. Well, a few things, actually. First they chose to continue under a different name. Second, instead of holding a tv competition show for a new singer, they each tried out and settled on one. Third, they got a new member to fill out guitar and keyboard duties. So, no Doug Yule's Velvet Underground or INXS as a self-cover band with a singer from tv. They played Joy Division's dates in the U.S., released a mighty single to finish off the official Joy Division legacy (kinda) and then wrote and recorded Movement.

This record did not have that good a reputation when fresh. If you listened to it the right way (so to speak) it was watery JoyDivision with a guy who couldn't sing. While the next LP Power Corruption and Lies and even singles released after Movement were more confident statements of where the band was headed, Movement gets left as a completist's album the way Still was for Joy Division. That's a pity as Movement shows a band finding their own way at their own pace and finding that the pace of the way is as fast as it was between Unknown Pleasures and Closer. They are the same musicians, after all. It's not like Smokie decided to ditch the AOR hits and get all angsty. Some of this does sound a little like Closer II but careful listening will reveal the forward march in every track.

The first thing new listeners heard from this metamorphosed version of their favourite band was not the jackhammers and medieval drumming of Atrocity Exhibition but a lone guitar, a little wobbly from a chorus pedal playing a brisk downward figure but not a crushing minor third. The drums and bass pick it up and the second guitar adds seom swirling overdriven arpeggios. The vocal is by Peter Hook but at this stage it might have been either of the other two as it's pushed back to sit among the other instruments, only just a little over them for clarity. Fans had already heard the upbeat major key sound of Ceremony as it's own single and about half of it live on Still. But where that sounded expansive of the previous sound this sound bright with a fanfare like riff high on the fretboard and infectious danceable rhythm. The words are addressed to a second person and describe an act of finality but also an attitude of resumption. It's like a statement to anyone who needed to hear it that the new name and sound were from the same people and, no, they werent going to try and get away with pretending it didn't happen.

But then things do go down. Truth begins with a gentle odd beat on a drum machine that is joined by a melodica, the reedy schoolkid blown keyboard that would feature in the band's music for years to come. Here it is playing a lamenting figure on a minor third and down modally to a tone below.  It's Bernard's voice as it will be for almost all the songs on the record. It's a strange day and he feels isolated from everyone he sees as he walks along outside. An instrumental section brings the familiar sound of overdriven guitars that sound like machines. A song of mourning? Hard not to think it.

An echoey synth and bass with a thumping kick drum and machine percussion, Senses takes on a kind of funk that was tried in Komakino by the old band. Two brief verses with abstract images and the refirain, no reason ever was given. The funk workout continues but it's not a boogie party with the synth drone of death rising from the depths and the brittle guitar duel not sounding like Chic. Eventually, the downward motion prevails and repeats until it halts in a swirling cloud of synthesis.

Very similar territory is navigated for Chosen Time with the funk more regimented into a machine like briskness. Sumner's frail vocal narrates a figure helpless to understand what has happened to his friend. I think this is unambiguously about Curtis. The jammy workthrough of the riff ends in the same kind of arcade game synthesised splatter as Insight from Unknown Pleasures. 

Over on side two, I.C.B. begins with a much grimmer lone guitar riff that is more quickly backed with a stamping kick drum and then insistent bass riff. Bernard's thin voice is fragile, barely above a whisper, as he sings strings of abstraction that add up to a sense of helplessness again. Two verses, a riff workout and an end with more of the Insight game beeps and squeals. Then, after the band has stopped a soft bass note has been left on as a kind of gentle counter. The title might well stand for Ice Cream Brontosaurus but probably does stand for Ian Curits' Burial. The melancholy created by the vocal, soft as thoughts while riding in a car to a cemetery, and the constrasting force of the music build a cloudy day of conflicting emotions. It's a song of resignation and always gets straight to me.

The Him is the most elaborate arrangement on the album, shifting from the quiet bass riff of the opening, through the introductory keyboard and muted trumpet, the controlled harmonised vocals and then the raging banshee wail of the instrumental sections. It's not elaborate because of any complex counterpoint (it's one riff all the way through and a three-note one) but the emotive passages which range from the ominous to the intense to the great howling instrumental sections after each verse, the second delayed as a cinematic synth drone ramps up the tension before an even more violent playing of the distant screaming synth section storms in. Bernard is left with the final words of the song, which is seeped in images of guilt and religion: "I'm so tired. I'm so tired...." Seldom has emotional exhaustion felt so satisfying. This song was the only thing that worked after the worst break up of my life happened. I was almost levitating listening to it.

Doubts Even Here. People without depth will say this song sounds like something from Closer and leave it at that. A few bars of military tom toms march until the meltingly beautiful figure of contrary motion begins on the keyboards. This will be almost the entirety of the song's harmonic structure, a procession of insistent epic of the strings and a building interplay between the bass and guitars both tightens and expands. Three verses of imagery that might well be Hook's statement of grief but also contain anger which could apply to a world beyond that. And then something happens at the end. Hook sings a three note melody rising to a minor third as the harmonic structure changes from modal to diatonic. Instead of the lower voice returning to C it falls to A which changes the emotional tone immediately from the worrying intensity of the verses to something more grinding and tragic. Also, as this is happening we hear new member Gillian Gilbert speaking. Sometimes in collision with Hook's singing and sometimes between lines. It can be very difficult to work it out. I don't really want to do this as the mystery of it adds so much to the emotional weight of the song. Then again, when I found this out it adds to it. Gillian is reciting the seventy-seventh Psalm which is an odd piece of work that goes like this:

I was dazed and I could not speak.

My thoughts went back to times long past.

I remembered forgotten years.

All night long, I was in deep distress.

As I lay thinking, my spirit was sunk in deep despair.

Will the Lord reject us for evermore and never again show favour?

Has his unfailing love now failed us utterly?

Must his promise time and again be unfullfilled?

Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Has he in anger withheld his mercies?

But then, O Lord, I call to mind thy deeds.

I recall thy wonderful acts in times gone by.

Weirdly, if you read this while listening to the song her voice seems to sound completely clear.

Denial closes the album with more heavy tom toms, churning guitars and a faceless vocal from Bernard with words about a failure to communicate or perhaps even to understand and act in prevention. "It's just something I know. The answer's not there. It comes and it goes and it frightens me." And then, finally: "time worked so well upon us, inside of me, inside my soul." The intensity ends only when the song does and it does so suddenly without lingering. Album over.

Of course the death of their friend by suicide was going to affect them deeply and find its way into their music. The effect of this is strange considering where this band had come from. While Ian Curtis with his stormcloud of a voice was absent from the sound and replaced by voices that often sounded cowed by self consciousness and thick emotion his death dominated their first long statement. Recall that, apart from anything else, they were writing about someone who was distinct from the one the fans thought they knew, distinct even from the one they believed they themselves knew. Recall, too, that these were people in their early twenties who were channelling into their skill an event of crushing impact with a perplexing origin and a series of increasingly complex shockwaves into the culture. 

But this is not a concept album, not, at any rate, the way that The Wall was a concept album. It's still poignant to think that in the midst of the bizarre cult-like mourning of Ian Curtis from the groundswell the band's own compulsion to make statements like this found a setting in a changing sound. As rapidly as they were developing it's notable how little this record resembles Joy Division. What it does sound like is a transformation the ex Joy Division go into the studio and come out as New Order. That's far deeper a change than the band that created Ceremony which even bore the Joy Division byline on the label. None of their records, their albums or their epic 12 inch singles sounded anything like this again. So, there they were at the station, talked about the only thing they could talk about, and when the train came they got on and never came back.