THE ALMIGHTY







NEW ORDER
G-Mex Centre, Manchester

  "Ladies and gentlemen, Joy Division!" announces the compere. From
restorative, prostrate desolation to unassailable dancendental alchemy,
the Joy Division/New Order continuum is 12 years of mystical, blessed
bliss and baffling, paradisial perfection. The substance of the 
critical vernacular is suspended in the faultless face of the New Order
embrace. Songs, chorus, sound demonstrate the difficulty in 
communicating and expressing the ineffable, charged rapture experienced 
when exposed to the electric caress of New Order's sonic sorcery. 
Earthbound belief is swept aside in a collaboration between music and 
language that attempts to transcend the trammels of the two.
  "Touched By The Hand Of God" activates operations and liberates the 
senses with automatic intensity. Suddenly, we are in magical motion 
through the miracle of rock's most immaculate mystery maze, a 
stainless, steel-hard sequence of superior summits and Elysian peaks
that is thrilling abandon, gorged on restless inspiration. New Order
are three local lads and one lass who seem to have as little awareness 
of how in heaven they produce these phenomenally well-proportioned 
wonders as the rest of us plebeians.
  Bernard is the fabulous boy-angel that he was at ULU in 1981, the 
only man who actually suits that peculiar, Northern razorcut. Possessed
of pop's most flawlessly pure voice-whisper, it makes a mockery of all
those hideous belchers and grunters like Bono, Bruce, Bargeld or 
anyone who stupidly assumes that, to capture the candour and cancer of 
life's rich or wretched tapestry necessitates the wholesale 
evisceration of one's entrails. Start again, suckers. Albrecht's 
breathless vocal kiss says it all without even trying. His fragile, 
vulnerable intonation, set to New Order's supreme aural architecture, 
is a child playing with a nuclear reactor.
  Peter Hook switches to mad, axe maniac mould, his flailing pigtail 
bush a remarkable testament to the band's resolutely anti-fashion 
stance, and New Order heat our hearts with "Ceremony", reminding us 
that, approaching the third decade of their history, this is the single 
most consistent, constantly creative powerforce of the age. "True 
Faith" issues forth with the crystalline clarity of its vinyl 
counterpart, a svelte, lissom lovely. "1963" simply vies for the 
status, with precious few others, as the most gorgeous song in the 
English lexicon, Alrecht's pleading, yearning delivery burning a hole 
of honey in my head. New Order have the kind of unimpeachable pop 
sensibility that The Pet Shop Boys, for one of any million you may wish 
to hurl into the fray for argument's sake, would sell their slender 
souls for.
  Like Chic, the only other constellation to sculpt masterpieces from 
the stars with such controlled, classic grace, New Order realise that 
the most damagingly beautiful music must combine a European trance-
disco bomb beat with mournful, melancholic chord formulations. This
crying and dancing initiative has been pursued by Kraftwerk, Yello and 
countless American 12 inch imports. Tonight's two new sugar rushes 
exhibit the frightening facility with which New Order can elevate and 
excite. Miserable? you must be joking. This is the most uplifting, 
emotionally satisfying sound ever imagined.      
  "Temptation" is a bolt of bright blue lightning streaking across the 
night sky. "Bizarre Love Triangle" is a waterfall-turned-treacle 
gushing from the galaxy into our lobes, while "Perfect Kiss" darts and
dashes with fantastic finesse. "Fine Time" is the culmination that 
proves Acid House is something Bernard, Stephen, Gillian and Peter 
decided to invent one rainy teatime in Macclesfield when they had 
bugger-all else to do. 
  A public celebration of Olympian proportions, New Order investigate 
private joy and personal sorrow more correctly, completely than any 
other group on the planet. They are the first and final word on all 
that funny, fiddly stuff between being born and keeling over for the 
last time. This is God's backing band, an indestructable collective
sweeping through His Greatest Hits with quintessential, sensual 
delight. We can merely surrender unconditionally, stare up at them,
struck dumb with awe at the almighty shadow that they continue to cast
over Planet Rock as we career headlong into the Nineties.
PAUL LESTER    

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