New Order, Retro

There are many ways to recognize a music snob, but probably the easiest is his insidious way of insisting that a band’s best work is invariably its earliest, least accessible stuff. In the case of New Order, of course, that early ouvre was Joy Division, the maudlin proto-gothic outfit from Manchester, England. We loved that dark, dense stuff 20 years ago—but then we grew up. Joy Division grew up too—or died, to be more accurate, after singer Ian Curtis hanged himself on the eve of their first American tour in 1980. Even the smartest rock critics were distracted by the tragedy, and didn’t notice that New Order rose from the ashes to redefine post-punk, heavily influence hip hop, and set the stage for modern electronica. How’d they do that? By taking their droney guitar rock and adding drum machines, synthesizers, and all the other impedimenta of the club scene. Today, historical revisionists rank New Order right up there with Kraftwerk as the pasty white progenitors of everything from Sir Mix-A-Lot to System of a Down.