Though I haven’t listened to New Order as much as Goldfrapp recently, this was my first time seeing them live so I was more excited to see them. And one reason they still hold a special place in my heart is the Republic album, which I first heard as a teenager. Something about those songs still strike a chord in me that their other albums might not. It’s not even one of their better albums, but I still love it.
It’s definitely an age and development thing, and I listened to that album a ton throughout my teens. More than Substance, Technique, Low-Life, or Brotherhood (which I may have gotten later). Though I did listen to the Best of album a lot. I don’t even know if I had Power, Corruption, and Lies until more recently. I actually haven’t heard their more recent albums either, but I think they are still worth a listen based on the newer songs “Tutti Frutti” and “Singularity.”
They did place extra emphasis on Joy Division – playing “Disorder” during the set and an entire encore of “Decades”, “Atmosphere”, and “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Fortunately, people were not dancing a lot for those songs which allowed me to get some decent video footage of it! An interesting thing I never really noticed was the video for “Crystal” has a band called the Killers (which inspired the now well known band The Killers):
Overall, New Order was great to finally see live, mostly because the lighting and sound of the Hollywood Bowl made it a great place for their music. I’ve sort of felt not allowed to like New Order because of the whole Peter Hook situation. I still think they are an extraordinarily good band without him and he seems to be doing fine with Peter Hook & the Light. Hopefully, they may still be friends, but who knows?
