There is a hardcore of humbugging New Order chroniclers who'll disdainfully view Retro--a four CD "Best Of" box set with bells on--as another missed opportunity to find a home for all the waif-and-stray rarities of the band's career. They have a point. Whither "Run 2", "MTO", "Video 586", the Western Works demos, the Hacienda Christmas flexi, various previously unreleased live BBC radio and TV sessions or--not for the first time and most heinously of all--the classic, definitive "blue ribbon cover" version of "Ceremony"? Nevertheless, journalists Miranda Sawyer (who harvests most of the familiar hits on the "Pop" disc) and John McCready (who--from the haunting grace of "Elegia" to the latterday lullaby of "Run Wild"--assembles key album cuts on the "Fan" disc) hardly put a foot wrong. Rejoice, for the original full-length vinyl versions of "Temptation" and "Confusion" (both ousted by remixes on the Substance compilation) are judiciously reinstated while such errant clangers as "State of the Nation" and the slapdash 12-inch of "Subculture" are consigned--forever, hopefully--to the dustbin of misadventure. Although "Ceremony" and the doomed imperialistic dirge of "In a Lonely Place" (both Joy Division compositions, of course--just how good could that third Joy Division album have been?) remain two of the best songs in the band's repertoire, the real New Order first stood up with the motorised whirring of 1981's transitional "Everything's Gone Green"--a tentative juxtaposition of the lyrically downbeat (solitude, disorientation and so on) and stimulating, electronic rhythms. It was a blueprint not only for their future but for popular music's future, for within 24 months--while road testing a new drum machine--New Order had conceived "Blue Monday", unarguably one of the five most important records made since the very genesis of rock & roll. Essentially, Retro tells you everything Joe Public needs to know about New Order's transformation from reticent, sour-faced introverts to matey, media-conducive hedonists with Mike Pickering's cherry-picked compendium of remixes (Disc Three) and Bobby Gillespie's bootlegger-ish live selection (Disc Four) upping the "must-have" ante for New Order completists aggrieved by the aforementioned omissions. --Kevin Maidment
Login
Add tags