PERFECT VISIONS







NEW ORDER

  It begins. It thumps with glee, it swirls with lackadaisical 
intensity. "You're much too young to be a part of me, you're much too 
young to get a hold on me." And never have veterans sounded so
brilliantly arrogant, masters so eager. Jesus. "Technique" is so
effortlessly GREAT, so languidly heroic, so vibrant and thrilling 
despite itself, that one wishes one could weep.
  As the Austrian philosopher Rose Royce once commented: "I'm in love
(and I love the feeling)." That's what this is like. I first hear it on
a train from Waterloo and as the power stations and football pitches 
fly past, I want to get out and race the train to the sound of this 
perfect, perfect music. New Order know that the times throw a 
malfunctioning grey electric blanket over our emotion, but also that 
the slightest wriggle could be the one to turn it on again. They do 
this wriggle repeatedly, on every jauntily fatigued song, like they've 
done it many times before. Only on "Technique", they do it more 
skilfully and confidently than ever. This leads not to plushness or
sumptuousness, but to a tumbling pumping river of their strengths,
their weaknesses, their glib grandeur. Never have New Order sounded so 
little like people from Manchester, so much like gods.
  It's clear by now that, though they seem able to clean up in any 
medium, there are two bas(s)ic New Order modes of transportation - the
pop one which is like The Cure ripping off New Order, and the disco one 
which is like Shannon ripping off New Order. Both are severally 
represented here without any falling between two stools. Their feel is
whisker-fine, their surges are princely. 
  Albrecht's fragmented and victimised, but resilient, paper-mache 
poetry hauls itself up for what stings like one final summation of the 
shameful agonies of being male, of being prey to love and lust with
equal sincerity/severity. Of acknowledging a bewildering sense of 
futility but still for some reason writing things down. When I say "male"
I don't mean to imply that a "female" couldn't have written these
simple yearnings and elegies, but that she wouldn't have started from 
the same angle. Undoubtedly "Technique" is inspired by a vulnerable,
peculiarly boyish, somewhat petulant romanticism. from start to finish,
from (heart on) sleeve (a cherub) to beaty monster inside. "I can't 
find you, I can't find my peace of mind without you."
  As ever New Order temper Barney's pseudo-metaphysical couplets with a
deceptive flippancy. (this is what always made them better and deeper 
than Joy Division.) "Fine Time " bubbles in, fascistically and 
facetiously making you dance. "Sophisticated lady, you got style and
you got class, but most of all..." We strain to hear the punchline. We
want to hear the punchline. We need to hear the punchline. "...Love
technique." Ah, that'll be the title then. I am fully prepared to 
believe the lamb bleating at the end of this track is Christ 
applauding.
  From then on it's irresistible, New Order marching through eight 
effervescing asphalt plains. There isn't a sub-GREAT moment to be 
found. When the majestic swooning "Run" "takes it down" you know that
if the modernist ensemble come rushing back in with all swooshes 
blazing before the song fades, you'll start giggling at how marvellous
all this is getting. They do. You do. you're sold. you're buying.
You're coming out for spring. 
  "All The Way" is gently awesome, precision guitars and rhythms 
levitating Albrecht's camp grandiloquence: "It takes years to find the
nerve to be apart from what you've done, to find the truth inside 
yourself and not depend on anyone." There are many confessionals
regarding strain, age, doubt, determination. "Love Less" and the 
probable next single "Round And Round" (a shimmering white funk 
whirlwind, if whirlwinds can shimmer, which I'm sure they can) build an
apposite bridge between sentiment and dynamism. The latter is again 
evocative of travel, of flirting with life's hugeness. New Order are 
all about those minutes when you feel like a winning underdog and you
knew all along you could do it.
  Of course, there's some miserablism. The beautiful (no other word)
"Vanishing Point" and "Dream Attack" allow the lights up at the end of 
the party and, well, things are really quite manageable. They don't get
morose. They get serene. Authentically. Before this there's a snarling
"Guilty Partner", a bloodrush rather self-effacingly called "Mr Disco", 
and the aforementioned and utterly regal "Run", possibly their most 
poised and potent sculpure since "Thieves like Us". Play it loud and 
obsessive.    
  Ultimately New Order are a subjective experience. A hundred lines 
here provoke productive self-examination and the hygiene of the sound 
encourages more anima projections than "La Boheme". I'm not being
indulgent here (not by my standards) but you should be when you listen
to it. And it swings, did I say it swings?
  "My life ain't no holiday, I've ben through the point of no return. 
I've seen what the man can do, I've seen all the hate of a woman too."
Yes Bernard, we're all growing up. England's finest reluctant pop poet.
I mean it. When he hits menopause there'll be a hell of a novel in this 
man. Meanwhile, the propulsion of the grooves is crisper than ice, more
active than anarchy, swaggering on crutches.
  When New Order are this GREAT, this effortlessly, the rest might as 
well go home and peel onions or something. "Technique" is the state of
the embers of the Eighties, mystique and mistakes merging, kissed by
the ruby lips of God.
  "Technique" is a rare and ravishing triumph.
CHRIS ROBERTS


    
 

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