Power, Corruption
and Lies (AM9), American Issue (includes "The Beach" and "Blue
Monday")
Artist: New Order
Release: May 2, 1983
Label: Factory (Factus 12)
Producer: New Order
Length: 57:14
Tracks: 1) "Age of Consent" (5:16); 2)
"We All Stand" (5:14); 3) "The Village" (4:37); 4) 5 8 6
(7:31); 5) Blue Monday (7:32); 6) "Your Silent Face" (6:00) 7)
Ultraviolence (4:52); 8)"Ecstacy" (4:25); 9) "Leave Me
Alone" (4:40); 10) "The Beach" (7:22)
Personnel: Bernard Sumner, vocals, guitars, melodica, synthesizers and
programming; Peter Hook, 4- and
6-stringed bass, electronic percussion; Stephen Morris, drums, synthesizers and programming; Gillian
Gilbert – synthesizers and guitars
Out of the ashes of Joy Division came New Order in the most
seamlessly impressive musical reinvention in rock (outside of Bowie), but it
wouldn't happen until their 2nd LP, Power,
Corruption and Lies, an album which defines the synth-pop dynamic for
the 80s. Though the sound is dominated by synthesizers and bass, Bernard
Sumner's melodic and decidedly subdued vocals and guitar ensured that this
record would be the most human synth-pop album of the era. Sumner may
not have been anywhere near as mesmerizing as Ian Curtis, but New Order wasn't
about that. New Order was the picture perfect team;
a group in which each member was never above passing the ball, and no one ever dominated a song. Movement (AM7), with its dark, moody ambiguiety could be found virtually nowhere on Power, Corruption and Lies, the ideology was
there and the lyrics were as profound (if understated) as ever (Pet Shop Boys
come to mind), but this true 80s' expression through dance music, the precursor
to EDM and rave and trip-hop, but with substance. Joy Division invented
Shoegaze and New Order abandoned it at its pinnacle.
Purists will
insist that "The Beach" and "Blue Monday" do not belong
(they are not on the UK release), but New Order was a band of excesses:
excessive intros, excessive instrumental bridges, excessive counterpoint, and
throughout their career (with the exception of Movement, which again is more
of a Joy Division album in the way the Trick
of the Tail emulates Peter
Gabriel's Genesis), the philosophy was far from less is more; it was more is
more, it was excess is more. Power,
Corruption and Lies is the
sign of a band coming into its own after great adversity. The suicide of
Ian Curtis was not just the loss of a lead singer for an underground
powerhouse; for Sumner, Hook and Morris, it was the loss of a dear, troubled
friend. New Order's first album Movement is a funereal, grim LP that shows
the band had still not come to grips with this loss. Power, Corruption and Lies instead has become the most ripped off
album of the decade, if not of all time, and one of the finest of the 80s.
Among the best, "We All Stand" is five minutes of pure electronic melancholia. "Your Silent Face" is ballad-esque and showcases New Order's penchant for subtle beauty among these synthesized dance tracks. But the showcase tune, "Leave Me Alone" is pure, moody solitude. Bernard Sumner rolls the song along slowly at first, but the urgency in his voice elevates as his "character" becomes increasingly frustrated in his inability to escape the company of others. The lyrics keep in line with New Order’s usual sexual despondence:
From my head to my toes
To my teeth, through my nose,
You get these words wrong
You get these words wrong, every time,
You get these words wrong.
I just smile.
