New Order - 'Retro' (London)
4/5
By: Toby L
Accounting for the career of an act as fruitful, richly and wildly inventive, and as driven as New Order can never prove a stroll in Primrose Hill... Or, more aptly, a gentle walk through Salford Town Centre. Yes, Manc through and through, where their contemporaries prior and post may have worn the associated-tag of 'Mancunian' quite noticeably, New Order were and are never identifiable by an immediate indie-guitar sound which hallmarks their surroundings; sure, they're distinctive - Hooky's bass-lines are almost atrociously recognisable at times - yet there's never been a formula to their progression... Their artistic-endeavour has often been unplanned - take the tragic circumstances which formed their origin as an example of this - but their consistency and prowess has almost continually dumbfounded and astounded.
So, enter 'Retro': the compendium to the band's career, housed in four CD's featuring track-listings selected from the likes of Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie and supportive-journalists Miranda Sawyer and John McCready. Sadly, the impressive array of celeb-associates and individually-themed albums herein ('Pop', featuring the hits; 'Fan', offering obscure matter; 'Club' donning remixes; and 'Live', with classic run-throughs of NO faves, spanning the mists of time) manage to conceal the fact that the true 'Order-reveller will be absent of the truly scarce material... The mystified existences of 'Video 586', 'MTO', even the notorious Western Works demos - they're all nowhere to be seen.
But let's not work miracles or meet to excessive compulsion-desires. As a body of work, 'Retro' more than matches and justifies the glorious existence of a trio/quartet whose rock-dance hybrid has entertained and survived for years. The casual listener will marvel at the obligatory Greatest-Hits compilation, the epic likes of 'Fine Time', 'Temptation' and 'True Faith' rolled off within just the first quarter of an hour, other predictable highlights forming from the full-length edits of 'Confusion' or their signature-tune 'Blue Monday', even their most recent top-ten 'Crystal' standing firmly amidst its legendary counterparts.
'Fan', meanwhile, sets a pretty stealthy standard for itself, the Joy Division-penned 'In A Lonely Place' still gleaming in its intricately early-80s fashion, and the glorious 'Your Silent Face' featuring a well-earnt position alongside their more melancholic moments, 'Leave Me Alone' or 'Lonesome Tonight'. Gillespie's personal array of concert-faves marks an impressive highlight in the final CD of the set, early exhibitions in Glastonbury of 'In A Lonely...' and a wondrous opening 'Ceremony' from Barcelona in '84 both as vivid on recording as they must have been in their original performed-context. However, with every rose comes a thorn - and the less said about the turgid dance-a-thon which forms the remixes-compilation, the better... With so few moments of genius, file under 'completists only'.
In all, this is an exemplary batch of material from what was always a merely exemplary musical-force. Quite how their future pans out may prove unexpected, but - as this body of work unveils - that was always their charm in the first place, no?
Artists in this article: New Order
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