New Order
Sub-culture club: nobody sounded like New Order in 1985.
★★★★
Low-Life Definitive
RHINO. CD/DL/LP
FOR THEIR third LP, New Order’s sights were set on America. They went for maximum audience engagement by… putting worried-looking drummer Stephen Morris on a sleeve wrapped in tracing paper. Aptly, this multi-disc edition allows all contradictions. The core album remains among their most essential, with warring psychological states soundtracked by consummate Hi-NRG pop and electronic rock, with an added disc of unreleased instrumentals and ‘Writing Sessions’ expanding a familiar landscape in ways fans will relish. On DVD, four contemporaneous gigs show a group adept at wrestling with synths and live performance – there are no off nights here – with a great newly-unearthed Belgian date finding singer Bernard Sumner on whooping and slap bass. No one else was sounding like this in 1985, and no one else really ever has, though you might wonder why a ‘Definitive’ version omits contemporaneous 12-inch mixes. All four members contribute to the illuminating monograph.