New Order – (The Best Of) NewOrder (1994)

I bought this last week for a quid in a charity shop, and I'll be honest, my expectations weren't high.

When Ian Curtis died and the remaining three members of Joy Division decided to carry on as New Order, I appreciated that it wasn't going to be the same band. I saw the band at an early (April 1981) gig in Sheffield, coming away unsure of what I'd heard.

I bought Movement soon after release in late 1981, and felt that it was promising, and that the Joy Division sound was still in evidence, and on 1983's Power, Corruption and Lies, the sound had developed into something of their own, but by 1985's Low-Life, their move to dance electronica left me behind. I wasn't convinced.

So, what of this "Best of"? Well, it's obviously completely subjective, but for me, in the years 1981-1994 this is not the "Best Of". To me it's the "commercially most successful". perhaps the earlier years had already been represented on the previous 1987 compilation, Substance, but there's a marked absence from this compilation from the post-punk New Order, with dance New Order completely dominating.

That's not to say it's all awful, it isn't. Opener True Faith was a great single, and Regret probably the best (by a long way) thing on the 1993 album, Republic. Thieves Like Us and Vanishing Point. Of course, Blue Monday and World In Motion eventually come along at the end, and leave the listener on a high.

But to get here, I've had to plod through a lot of what sounds like generic 1980s dance stuff, which really doesn't do it for me. And the fact that there's no single before Blue Monday, and nothing from the first two albums on this compilation grates heavily.

New Order are the only band that lost me when they embraced electronica dance music, but possibly the one which disappointed me most, as does this almost exclusively dance compilation.

Link to album tracks

2* - Many people think that New Order's dance output is the "best of", I'm not one of them.