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Retro - New Order box set |
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So, we've had a greatest hits. A couple in fact. There's been the unofficial split and the unofficial reunion. There's been the "Back to Mine" compilation mix CD. Here's the Box Set. And coming soon, the musical, words by Ben Elton, arrangements by Andrew Lloyd Weber. Have the mighty New Order become conventional in their old age? Or, after a career characterized by wilful individuality, have they just given up resisting? Whatever the reasons, if it puts some cash in their pockets after the creative and financial heaven 'n' hell that was Factory, who could begrudge them? For this, ladies and gentlemen, is New Order. Quite simply, one of the best bands to have ever pressed their dreams into wax. "Retro: The Box Set", beautifully packaged as ever, attempts to encapsulate the sprawling, messy marriage of high art and street culture that is New Order. And it does so like this: If you can stump up the cash for this slab of Northern Electronic Soul, what becomes immediately obvious is just how good their back catalogue is. The "Pop" disc alone contains track after track of ground-breaking, heart-wrenching music. And although not in chronological order, in Miranda Sawyer's selection you can clearly hear popular music shifting around them, being dragged from early analogue electronics through to a sequenced, sampled future. Let's not forget that New Order were doing their best work at a time when electronic and rock music really were worlds apart. Despite the personal tragedies unfolding within the band, they could have stuck to the safe post-punk landscape of their contemporaries. They didn't. They jumped. And as they fell, they grabbed onto a distinctive new sound- Hooky's monstrous bass, Bernard's plaintive vocals, Gillian's icy wall of synthesizers, Stephen's immaculate clatter. That same sound was flexible enough to allow them constantly to innovate. And this breaking of new ground didn't occur in a vacuum. Experimentation in the studio was always accompanied by experimentation in the boardroom and the medicine cabinet, and the part which money, pride and other dangerous substances have played in the story should not be underestimated. You can find a particular version of the myth skulking around in the background of recent film "24 Hour Party People", pumping itself full of drugs. Part of New Order's charm, undoubtedly, is the characters themselves and the way these are embodied by the music. As a collective, they were always what you would expect of a gang of clued-up Mancunians- obstinate, funny, genuine, sarcastic, mysterious, grumpy, delightful. If you listen hard enough, you can hear this attitude bleeding through the tracks, most obviously in Bernard's lyrics. A track such as "True Faith" takes his quasi-mystical musings and hides them beneath a sheen of muscular electronic rock. "Temptation" sees him exploring the darker aspects of love with a nonsensical tongue firmly in his cheek. On "Regret", he yearns for a simpler, happier existence- "have a conversation on the telephone". New Order have always dealt in personal politics, the experiences which life has thrown at them, rather than abstracting into other times and places. Tellingly, they never miss an opportunity to stick a well-aimed pixie boot into the flag-waving antics of U2, their direct contemporaries once upon a time, a band who have consistently reached for the Big Issues by singing about other people's lives. Bernard has always kept it personal, and the integrity of New Order, their stubborn refusal to "sell out", to do the easy thing, has given them a cultural legacy with immense artistic clout. This, in essence, is the appeal of New Order, a band capable of expressing themselves in sublime ways without ever losing sight of their own frailty or the ridiculousness of the pop star agenda. The other discs tell alternative versions of the same story. The "Fan" disc covers more of the early New Order stuff, the period when the dark tones of JD and the electronica of Kraftwerk were locked in a love-hate relationship. This will no doubt please some of the older brigade who remember when it was all fields round here- they rightly point out that the later stuff hasn't often hit the heights of the early to mid period. John McCready avoids the hits and pulls together a collection of lesser-known treasures such as "Your Silent Face", "All Day Long" and "Every Second Counts". Mike Pickering's "Club" disc is a strange beast really. Whilst New Order always sought a dancefloor sensibility, their tracks didn't often stand up to the rigours of the clubbing experience- few of them ever boomed out across the Hacienda dancefloor which Pickering regularly controlled. However, not many of the remixes actually improve on the originals, or even offer a worthwhile alternative. It seems to have been too easy for the knob-twiddlers to beef up the beats, borrow a bit of Hooky's bass, change the synths, stick Bernard's vocal on top and collect the wages. A good example is "Confusion", in its original incarnation an inspired chunk of warped NY electro straight outta Salford. The remix is only listenable because it contains shadows of the awesome original. That said, there are some great moments, including mixes of "Bizarre Love Triangle", "Regret", "Fine Time" and the still amazing "Everything's Gone Green" (original). I approached the "Live" disc with some caution- New Order on stage have always had a tendency to be either jaw-droppingly good or ball-bustingly bad. Sometimes the sequencers pull them up to dizzying heights, sometimes the band find themselves fighting against the technology, falling into the holes between the beats. Thankfully, the band and Bobby Gillespie have chosen some memorable performances which capture the band in motion. As elsewhere, the selection here tends towards early material with storming renditions of "Ceremony", "Everything's Gone Green" and the live favourite "The Perfect Kiss". Of course, the private studio sheen is gone, rubbed off by the power of public spectacle. And the acoustics don't always do them any favours- Hooky's bass is all too often reduced to a distant rumbling rather than the full-on thunder of his low-slung bass. But as a blistering version of "Procession" demonstrates, in full flow, this band are a wonderful thing. And so, we come to the end. Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins has recently stated that New Order's back catalogue bears comparison with that of the Beatles. What would they reply? They've always had a healthy disregard for the press but thankfully, having listened to the box set, I can tell you what they would say. Bernard would mutter something sarcastic about scousers, Hooky would chime in with a potentially libellous comment before confidently declaring that the Order were far better than the moptops, Stephen would smirk and say something drier than dry, Gillian would smile and say nothing. And the ghost of Rob Gretton, their dear, departed manager, would simply lean forward, put Disc One of the box set into the CD player and press "Play".
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