New Order Live: Just what the doctor ordered while a contemporary music scene is suffering from AI overload

When Joy Division morphed into New Order, following the passing of troubled frontman Ian Curtis, it felt to many followers like a clearer picture and sound were coming through a static video. The fuzzy guitars suddenly sounded sharper. The lead vocals, courtesy of Bernard Sumner, still kinda modal but in a definitively higher register. The permeating basslines still big in just about every song, but the treble turned up a few notches. And the new incarnation of the band appearing more polished overall – optimistic even.

At Wednesday night’s New Order concert in Perth – the first stop of their Australian tour – those contrasting qualities of fuzzy versus sharp / focused; static vs crisp; lo-fi vs meticulously layered, were very much evident, that way giving everybody in the audience something to delve into and fondly remember.

The songs selected for this tour run the gamut of post-punk New Order classics like Ceremony and Age of Consent, to excellent latter-day electro-laden singles such as Crystal and Plastic, and no less than four Joy Division gems that the band respectfully refer to as “covers” these days (what other band would have the guts to do that?).

Even with songs whose eras were in close proximity, there was a certain juxtaposition in the raw versus the well-cooked. Crystal, for example, saw Sumner’s vocals crawling in and out of synths and guitars, occasionally getting squashed but giving indie edge realness compared to its original incarnation, while Plastic was so perfectly put together – an awesome combination of slick backing track and confident live instrumentation, it superseded even its greatest remixed form.

Seminal songs – ones that have gone on to influence future musical outfits, such as Sub-culture and State of the Nation – were balanced out by perfectly polished diamonds, namely True Faith, Bizarre Love Triangle and, of course, the global perennial favourite, Blue Monday.

In some songs, lead man Sumner revealed he doesn’t have the most golden of tonsils, but then New Order fans don’t expect infallible singing from the man. They want that excellent melding of deadpan lyrical delivery and awesome – usually uplifting – instrumentation, and they got plenty of it in this two-hour classic-packed show, helmed well by the other players in the band, Gillian Gilbert back on keys, Stephen Morris on percussion, Phil Cunningham on guitar, and Tom Chapman on bass.

The thing about New Order is that while they have been pioneers in the fields of electronica and progressive dance music, they have never sacrificed themselves to the pseudo power of the machine. I’ll take Bernard’s real world singing any day over the AI-infected vocals of today’s boring troubadours and pop wannabes.

New Order is a band that ought to be on every Gen-exer’s bucket list to see live, and an outfit who, looking out at Wednesday night’s large crowd, even manage to attract the younger, cooler club kids to their gigs.

As one reviewer in Japan, Kamaneko recently wrote, I too “am writing this record for myself in the future, so I can live further with such a wonderful memory.”

Thanks guys, for so many of the memories.

Antonino Tati

Photography by Duncan Barnes.

NEW ORDER CONTINUE THEIR AUSTRALIAN TOUR WITH THE FOLLOWING DATES:

SAT 8 MAR | SIDNEY MYER MUSIC BOWL, MELBOURNE
TUES 11 MAR | RIVERSTAGE, BRISBANE
FRI 14 MAR | SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE FORECOURT, SYDNEY
SAT 15 MAR | SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE FORECOURT, SYDNEY

To check for ticket availability, visit ticketek.com.au.