by Bryce Napier
Welcome to a new feature—Seven Selections—where I pick a band with a reasonably deep discography and ferret around for a handful of songs to spotlight. I'll include a Spotify playlist, when possible, so you can settle back, hit play, and enjoy some interesting music while I expound upon it. If the artist is unfamiliar (or only vaguely familiar via their biggest hits) to you, this would serve as my personal take of an introduction to the range of what you might expect from them; If you already know and love them, it's a chance, perhaps, to mull over some of their songs in a way you might not have attempted in a long while. Why seven? It’s enough elbow room to cast a wider net than a list of five, but not such an investment of time—either for me writing it or you reading it—as a list of ten. Plus, “Seven Selections” is alliterative, which makes it sound, you know, like a thing. That’s it.
[Nuance isn’t the Internet’s favorite thing. I know this. The simple act of creating a list will make some assume it’s my personal Top 7 list. This is not the case. The Seven Selections represent a vague triangulation of songs I like, songs I want to champion, and songs that sample from a broad spectrum of a band’s discography. There’s no strict formula, and the choices are largely instinctive. I’ll even refrain from numbering them, to make it feel that much less like a ranking.]
Touched By The Hand Of God
(1987)
This song was issued as a non-album single, and later (in 1988) included in a re-edited version on the soundtrack of a movie called Salvation!, to which the band contributed four songs in total. I have a vague recollection of my older brother owning that soundtrack, but it wasn’t one of the titles I’d steal from his room to listen to. The single was not issued in the US. If I’d heard it at that time, it left no mark upon my consciousness. For all intents and purposes, it was new to me when I purchased their 2002 (the best of) New Order collection.
The sound of the song led me to assume it was a reach into the vaults for something from their earliest post-Joy Division period, to include material not already covered by their landmark Substance compilation. (The typically unhelpful liner notes did nothing to dissuade me of that notion.) A polished 12-inch version (included as a track on the bonus disc of the 2008 remaster of Brotherhood) sounds more of its era—at just over seven minutes, the rigorously-tuned drum beats are allowed to stand alone for a moment before layers of instruments get folded into the mix. But the 7-inch, only half as long, dispenses with that kind of measured pacing and just dumps everything in, almost from the get-go. That claustrophobic density in the version I first became familiar with easily fooled me for years into thinking it was a long-lost track from 1981. So it sounds like early, rudimentary New Order, and existed (for me) in some weird unexplained vacuum, which I think contributes to its aura of self-contained mystery. I find it mesmerizing.
Your Silent Face
(from Power, Corruption & Lies, 1983)
Confession: Despite the seeming endorsement of the previous entry, I’m fairly ambivalent toward early New Order. I’ve never even bothered to get Movement, their debut. Likewise, although I do own Power, Corruption & Lies, I haven’t devoted much time getting to know it—except for this one song, which has transported me ever since I first (again, thanks to my brother) heard it decades ago. You may already be aware that Bernard Sumner is not much of a singer. That's what grounds a song like "Your Silent Face," whose arrangement is all grand grandiose grandeur. Peter Hook’s bass is used sparingly, coloring instrumental verses that trade off with sung ones. Gently burbling sequencers support massive synth chords that reach deeply into the left side of the keyboard, and this saturnine majesty consumes everything with sound. It’s the sound of communicating with alien consciousness; it’s Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. You’d expect a technically proficient singer to tack a soaring melody onto this, praising the dawn and the heavens and the wonders of existence; instead, Barney musters barely more than a speaking voice, delivering introspective malaise that is in sharp contrast to the accompaniment. It's like he's saying, "Yes, world, you're awe-inspiring. Now go away, I'm trying to think." Sometimes, I can really relate.
Every Little Counts
(from Brotherhood, 1986)
I like it when New Order end an album with a song that feels like a low-key epilogue. I enjoy this song as a free-standing entity, but I think its placement as an album closer is key. It's a fairly simple ditty, and Sumner's giggling at the juvenile lyrics is sweetly disarming—it might actually be the only way to sell lyrics this silly. The idiosyncratic title (a lyric from the second verse of the song, corrupting “every second counts,” the line used in the first and third verses and which would have made much more grammatical sense) is perfect. The pillowy synths, relaxed tempo, and earnestly-angsty/angstily-earnest tone put it in league with songs such as the Thompson Twins’ “If You Were Here,” and OMD’s “If You Leave.” And, like those songs, it feels like it belongs on a John Hughes soundtrack. (Yes, they gave a song, “Shellshock,” to the Pretty In Pink OST. But listen to “Every Little Counts” and tell me they didn’t ride the wrong horse into that barn.) The song’s arrangement slowly builds without changing gears, then just as gently falls apart, gradually becoming a shapeless swirl of organ chords before its abrupt needle scratch of a how-do-we-end-this-thing conclusion.
All The Way
(from Technique, 1989).
For some reason, "True Faith" and the Substance collection has always felt like the summation of New Order, with everything that followed seeming... optional. I remember a review of the Technique album at the time of its release; damning with faint praise, it read, "New Order has settled on life as an ace pop band." And I suppose it is hard to understand the remnants of Joy Division evolving into something that could record a kick-ass slice of electropop like "Fine Time" (and damn, I love that song—if this was a countdown of my favorites, it would have been on here with a bullet). The reason it doesn't sound overtly New Order-y is that it doesn't feature much of Peter Hook's distinctive bass sound, which is, as much as anything else, what makes New Order sound like New Order. "All The Way" follows "Fine Time" on the album, and it almost surprises me that it wasn't a single. Hook's bass is front and center, bearing more than a passing resemblance to the Cure's "Just Like Heaven," anchoring a great little song. In fact, I started to reassess the "optional" feel of this whole record a few years back, and I am now of the opinion that it is as good as anything they ever recorded. (Also, I constantly get this mixed up with the similarly blandly-titled "All Day Long" from Brotherhood. Which is neither here nor there. I'm just mentioning it.)
People On The High Line
(from Music Complete, 2015).
Regardless of the beats per minute, New Order never really shed the musical dourness of Joy Division. Even “World In Motion,” their 1990 song for the England football team, sounds more reluctant than joyous. That’s what makes “People On The High Line” such an anomaly. It’s a kick-ass Happy Mondays track, a song with the feel of the druggy Mancunian scene dubbed “Madchester” that found prominence in the early 1990s. But it doesn’t sound anything like New Order. This is, in no small part, because Music Complete is the first album made without Peter Hook on bass. (The album does welcome back original member Gillian Gilbert, absent since 2001’s Get Ready as she focused on raising her children with husband—and New Order drummer—Stephen Morris.) Sumner’s vocals are shadowed by guest Elly Jackson, making it feel much more “sung” than the average New Order number.
High-octane bass lines didn’t suit Hook’s plaintive style of playing, and any song that required hotter bass had it handled by a synth bass. So while most of Music Complete’s songs fit within a framework that have kind-of-Peter-Hook-but-not-so-slavishly-that-we’re-trying-to-sound-like-he’s-still-in-the-band bass parts, “People On The High Line” is propelled by a very funky bass guitar that I couldn’t see Hook playing in a million years. It’s strange (and strangely circular) that it ends up sounding so derivative of their own musical descendants, which makes it difficult to tout as a new direction—but it’s an awesome jam. I have to wonder if much of New Order’s natural fanbase share my enthusiasm.
Subculture
(from Substance, 1987; first released as a 12" single in 1985).
I'm specifying the remix that appears on Substance, because I prefer this dolled-up version, featuring a re-recorded lead vocal that is more regimented, less conversational than the version that appears on the Low-Life album. Listening to it now, I’m realizing that the revamped version shares some of the tricks mentioned above for “People On The High Line”—lead vocals bolstered by a simultaneous female singer’s delivery, as well as sporting some prominent backup vocals that are completely absent from the album cut.
One of the quirks of New Order is that they often title their songs something that does not appear in the lyrics, so it can be tough to remember which song is which. I feel like this excellent track gets lost in the middle of Substance, surrounded by stone classics like "Blue Monday" and "Bizarre Love Triangle." This mix dumps portentous, nervous bursts of sound onto the churchy chords of the original version. The single mixes were done by John Robie, but they feel a lot like Trevor Horn mixes from the same era, where the band’s vision of the song is merely a foundation for a pile-on of dramatic studio fuckery. Usually I pitch for the stripped-down version of a song, but this is one case where I feel it benefits from the over-the-top production. [Note: I couldn't find the Substance version on Spotify; the next best thing is the 7" John Robie mix included on the 2005 Singles compilation, so that's what's on the playlist.]
Run Wild
(from Get Ready, 2001)
Get Ready is already the most guitar-heavy New Order record since Movement (when they were still in identity crisis mode, recording songs intended to be Joy Division tracks, written before JD frontman Ian Curtis’s suicide), but "Run Wild" is as far from the acid house throb of "Fine Time" as it could possibly be. A strummy acoustic guitar? A swelling orchestral backing? Who are these guys? Following the hard-driving "Close Range" on the album, this is another album-closer that feels like an epilogue, an encore played in the dressing room after the audience has gone home. There's still some droll outsider-ism—"I'm not cruel, and you're not evil/And we're not like all those stupid people/Who can't decide what book to read unless the paper sows the seed"—but that aside, this is as warm and cosy a New Order track as there ever was. It’s also one of the few Sumner lyrics that feels worth reflecting upon. It makes me melancholy, in the best way; I think it has something to do with the juxtaposition of that title, which sounds like it would be a churning dancefloor stomper, and the reality of the song, which feels like a reflection on youth as a demographic they are no longer part of. The low-energy refrain of "good times around the corner" feels like an empty promise. I wish it didn’t end on the line “I’m gonna live to get high,” which undercuts some of the sincerity of the song, but other than that, this is one of my very favorites from them, moreso because I didn’t have to share it with the general public’s experience of it, as it’s an easily-overlooked song from one of their post-heyday albums.