New Order

Power, Corruption & Lies (Definitive Edition) RHINO

All-killer, no-filler expansion of band’s foundation-laying second album.

New Order’s first album Movement was overshadowed by not only the death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis but also the very sound of that band. Fortunately New Order moved on, and by the time of recording follow-up Power, Corruption & Lies a year and a half later they had changed.

With Bernard Sumner’s distinctive lyrics and Gillian Gilbert’s keyboards to the fore, the New Order of Power, Corruption & Lies was a more confident record, ranging from the electronic dance bleeps of the slightly unfocused 586 and the polar Kraftwerk of Your Silent Face (with its famous whisper of liberation ‘So why don’t you piss off?’) to the rampaging gallop of Age Of Consent and the spooky chatter of Ecstasy. This was a band in a state of flux, trying out more experiments than an overbooked laboratory, and coming up with good ideas more often than not.

With its sense of outward questing rather than inwardlooking doom, Power, Corruption & Lies was a record that couldn’t have been made by Joy Division. It also couldn’t have been made without the singles that preceded it, each one a tiny sonic workshop expanding New Order’s sound. So it’s appropriate that this ‘definitive’ (sez you) edition features the clattering, New Yorky Confusion, the moody, lush Thieves Like Us and the overwhelming student disco monster that is Blue Monday.

With the inclusion of John Peel sessions and in-progress versions of songs (and without any half-arsed filler), this is a brilliant album expanded to just the right length. And it don’t cost a billion quid neither. ■■■■■■■■■■