Review:

on 2011-03-04 CharlesMartel Said:

This album was the one which changed New Order forever in my opinion. Before this, they had been a progression of Joy Division, in spite of "Blue Monday" and its heroic dance music. They were following in the post-punk footsteps of Joy Division and always threatened, especially with their early singles, to produce one of the classic post-punk albums (though they never did). Given the limitations of the band members and the lack of real lyrical talent within the band, it is, in retrospect, probably inevitable that they never managed to do so.

After this, they became an electronic dance band, little more than a slightly classier version of Depeche Mode or Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. As a consequence, this album is the last one which fuses those two styles. This fusion was not always successful in my opinion, but it was a commendable effort. The faults in it lie in the fact that techno-dance elements dominated over post punk, for this first time, on this album and that was always going to be a problem when it came to maintaining a link with their original fan base.

I had really always liked New Order up until this point and still found plenty to like about this album. The bass lines have always been one of the strong points of any New Order track. The guitars on this complement them too, and for once Bernard Sumner sticks within his abilities in terms of the vocals - in other words he doesn't try to sing too much. Perhaps he had by now come to realise that he was not and was never going to be Ian Curtis. If so, it took him long enough. His voice, always poor, is the single biggest downside to everything New Order ever produced, and that includes their great initial singles.

Then came the synthesisers and this is one of the other major downsides of the album. There were too many and their influence was beginning to overshadow the rest of the music. Music is made by people not machines, for only people can infuse it with the sensitivity and the feeling music needs to distinguish it from mere sound. And the moment I heard the use of the dreaded drum machines I began to have serious doubts about the future of my relationship with New Order. Either I was going to drift towards synth pop and techno dance in a big way or I was going to find New Order a band who, increasingly, I would fail to relate to. Sadly, it was the latter course which eventually came to pass. Even though, at the time I was flirting with the mainstream and this album seemed destined to accelerate that into a full-blown musical association with it, something, somehow, pulled me back from that fate. I don't know what it was, but I shall be forever grateful for it.

"This Time of Night" is my favourite track, closely followed by the opener, "Love Vigilantes". I retain a soft spot for "Elegia", a rather droning instrumental, simply because it features in the soundtrack of the John Huston film, "Pretty in Pink" which is one of my all time favourite films. Other than that I find it hard to get worked up about the remainder of the tracks on this album. Most of it is just neo-disco and not something I really had the time or inclination to get into too deeply. It is not that there is anything to truly dislike about this album, and it was still miles better than a lot of stuff which was being put out at the same time, but New Order were moving down a path I did not want to go. Before long New Order and I would part company for good.
Rating: 6/10