New Order

Education Entertainment Recreation: Live At Alexandra Palace RHINO

Post-punk legends deliver Springsteen-sized live spectacle.

New Order’s late-career comeback over the past decade has elevated these Mancunian post-punk icons to the arenarock premiere league. Purists might lament the loss of Peter Hook’s cascading bass lines and volatile stage presence, but the band’s current touring show is arguably their best ever, swapping their fabled punky amateurism for slick, hit-packed, audio-visual spectacle.

Capturing New Order’s only British show of 2018, this marathon double album and DVD package is stuffed with shiny disco-punk anthems and sardonic Salford humour. “It used to sound shite, that song,” Bernard Sumner quips after a crunchy, kinetic Ultraviolence.

One welcome recent development has been New Order’s wholehearted embrace of their Joy Division back catalogue. This set features four JD classics, including a spinetingling Atmosphere and a chillingly beautiful Decades.

The sole disappointment is a climactic Love Will Tear Us Apart, which has grown into New Order’s sky-punching answer to Born To Run but which here lacks its usual muscular wallop. ■■■■■■■■■■