New Order

In short order, New Order combined dance music's physicality with postpunk guitar rock and pop songwriting. This innovation made New Order one of the most important rock bands of its era, and one of the most ripped-off. Indie rock copped the band's melodic, high-end bass sound, just-folks fashion sense, and disco revisionism. New Romantics admired its emotional inscrutability. Techno and hip-hop traded beat sciences with the band. Everyone stole from New Order, and everyone's music improved as a result.

When Joy Division's singer, Ian Curtis, took his life on the eve of the band's first American tour, the three surviving members -- guitarist Bernard Sumner, bassist Peter Hook, and drummer Stephen Morris -- joined with keyboardist Gillian Gilbert, renamed themselves New Order, and tried to carry on. Movement is no fun; it's the sound of shattered pals working through survivor's guilt via emotionally sludgy synths and leftover Joy Division ideas. Everyone sounds exhausted, and new singer Sumner sounds terrified as well -- it's a well-meant bummer. The BBC Sessions are better: still very Joy Division, but livelier.

Which makes the followup EP, 1981-1982, that much more miraculous. The keeper is "Temptation" -- New Order finds a formula and congeals it into joy. Graced with an infinite hook, rhythmic rapture, a killer bass line, and Sumner's mediocre singing, "Temptation" is majestic, ravishing, and hypnotic in equal measure, qualities that became N.O. trademarks.

As did the band's 1983 single "Blue Monday." Like most seismic shifts in pop, "Blue Monday" still sounds totally shocking, the ultimate in flawlessly programmed, LSD-driven, push-button dance-pop, complete with Sumner's funny, who-cares vocal and an astonishing drum break -- a totemic accomplishment and a well-deserved hit.

Fully into its rebirth, the band set the bar insanely high; Power, Corruption and Lies is the first fully conscious N.O. album. There is no real revelation, and Sumner's vocals still refuse to grow a personality, but PCL fits the band's world-historical sound into the gorgeous ("Your Silent Face") and the cheeky ("Age of Consent"). (The CD version includes both sides of the "Blue Monday" single.)

The American debut, Low-Life, is prized as the band's apex by many connoisseurs, but it has aged oddly. The opener, "Love Vigilantes," is almost a non sequitur, a folk-ballad short story with a black punch line; narrative ain't Sumner's strong suit. "The Perfect Kiss" and "Sub-Culture" are perfect subcultural kisses, and the rest of the disc moves and shakes like a band truly hitting its stride. But in a career context, Low-Life has an off-putting feel -- the songs' sense of vigorous elation replaced with stately pretension.

Brotherhood is an underrated rocker, full of grand hooks ("Bizarre Love Triangle," "Weirdo") and hooky grandeur ("All Day Long," "Every Little Counts"). Sumner begins to hint at a personality, but he freely ignores content. It's New Order's most recognizable collection; when bands sound like New Order, they usually sound like Brotherhood.

Focusing on dance mixes of key singles, including "Temptation," "Blue Monday," and the spectacular near-hit "True Faith," the double-CD Substance is pure pleasure, moving from strength to exhilarating strength. A guidebook to 1980s pop, along with Madonna's Immaculate Collection and Prince's Purple Rain.

Soaked in proto-acid house ("Fine Time," "Run") and perfectly formed pop hooks ("All the Way," "Love Less"), Technique flows like a bacchanalian ode to getting royally blitzed on Ibizan Ecstasy. The pop is stellar, but the dance tracks seem absentminded, as if the band was, well, really, really high. Astonishing in spots, vapid throughout, Technique is New Order's masterwork of weightlessness.

Totally sick of each other, the members of New Order spent the next few years on side projects: Sumner with Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant and Smith Johnny Marr in the fop-pop supergroup Electronic; Hook in the appallingly rockist Revenge; Gilbert and Morris on the appropriately faceless the Other Two. New Order knocked out a World Cup anthem in 1990 ("World in Motion") and returned to active duty in 1993, with Republic. The catchy "Regret" was the band's first true American hit, but most of Republic is a serious phone-in: slick, dull dance-pop landscape dominated by indie-rock dreams. So New Order vanished again. The Best of, which includes key album tracks and '90s material, is fine, but it should be considered a companion to Substance, not a replacement.

The BBC Radio 1 Concert, a solid 1987 show by a spotty live band at the peak of its power, is notable for the live debut of "True Faith" and an amazing cover of the Velvet Undergound's "Sister Ray."

Fans hoped for a miracle comeback, but it's a dark day when New Order thinks it needs Billy Corgan and Primal Scream's help, which is where Get Ready left us in 2001. Finally realizing they had invented much of '90s indie rock by guiding '80s pop, New Order released Get Ready, the most straight-ahead rock album (the single "Crystal" is almost heavy) it had produced since Brotherhood. (JOE GROSS) From the 2004 The New Rolling Stone Album Guide