New Order, the classic powerhouse electro-dance group from the UK, played to a packed and welcoming crowd at Merriweather Post Pavilion last Sunday night.
Walking through the gates into the Pavilion grounds, the first thing I noticed was the endless sea of black Joy Division tee-shirts worn by the avid supporters of a band that came to a tragic end 43 years ago. After the suicide of front man Ian Curtis in May 1980, the remaining members of the now-infamous and beloved band Joy Division, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris, decided to continue as a band. They called themselves New Order.
If you are a fan of alternative music, particularly post-punk, progressive, and electro-dance music, you know that New Order forever set the bar for anyone in these and other genres. When you think back to what the music scene was like in the late ’70s before mainstream audiences adapted themselves to the synth-drenched ’80s, Joy Division was in a genre all its own. Joy Division and New Order paved the way for many bands to follow. Their influence can be directly linked to many modern groups of today, as well as acts to immediately proceed them. Groups such as The Cure, Depeche Mode, Bauhaus, and U2 have all adopted, to some degree, New Order-isms.
After Curtis’s death, Sumner took over the lead vocal spot, and later that year, they added Gillian Gilbert to the band’s line-up. Over the years, New Order has been through a few different line-up changes, specifically losing one of its founding members, Peter Hook. Summer has always remained in the center of it all however, with band members Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert, Phil Cunningham, and bassist Tom Chapman filling Hook’s spot. They may not have ever set out to remain a successful working band four decades later, but that’s exactly what they did.
One of the most notable accomplishments to New Order’s credit and certainly one that I could not fail to mention considering that this is The Vinyl District, is that they are said to have the best selling 12″ vinyl single to date. It was the band’s fourth release, a single titled “Blue Monday,” and it was packaged with several die cut holes, modeled to look like a floppy disc. Although the success of “Blue Monday” gave New Order a foot hold as a band of the times, it did not yield much revenue for the group due to the album’s high production costs.
When New Order took the stage for Sunday’s performance, I honestly didn’t know what to expect. After all, this is a band who hasn’t put together a US tour since 2005. The anticipation at the Pavilion was looming over the the stage like a fog, seemingly even more noticeable to me without Peter Hook at the bass guitar. That all changed the moment they started their first song of the night, “Elegia.” The crowd had now settled into an endless dance-rhythm that they just wouldn’t stop.
This is when I realized New Order is one great live band. Their albums do not do their music justice; they sounded bigger, fuller and richer then I had ever heard them. I could literally see how their music was affecting people in the seats. The driving synth hits were timed perfectly with their dazzling light show (the biggest light production I’ve seen in months). Bassist Tom Chapman had this bigger-than-life quality to his tone and essentially held down the entire rhythm section, along with drummer Stephan Morris. Sumner’s and Cunningham’s guitar work and vocals danced and swirled around the whole thing. The setlist included “Regret,” “Your Silent Face,” “Blue Monday,” and a few Joy Division songs to boot: “Isolation,” “Shadowplay,” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”
Whether you love New Order or not, they put on one hell of a show that would inspire any music fan. They are simply veteran musicians doing what they do best, orchestrating beautiful arrangements of music.
