Forty Five More Minutes Of New Order And Friends

This is a follow up to last Sunday's Your Silent Face mix which veered into their New Order's back catalogue and those of some adjacent artists- Galaxie 500, The Liminanas, Ian McCulloch, Gorillaz, The Times, Mike Garry, Joe Duddell and Andrew Weatherall. This one starts off with another Power, Corruption And Lies song, Age Of Consent, and then heads off with some covers, some 80s NO, another Weatherall remix and some recent edits. 

Forty Five More Minutes Of New Order And Friends

• New Order: Age Of Consent
• Iron And Wine: Love Vigilantes
• Thurston Moore: Leave Me Alone
• New Order: Dreams Never End
• New Order: Lonesome Tonight
• New Order: Regret (Sabres Slow 'N' Lo)
• New Order: Vanishing Point (Rich Lane Edit)
• New Order: Blue Monday (Newly Reordered Remix)

Age Of Consent is the opening song on New Order's 1983 album Power, Corruption And Lies, a day- glo, lysergic rush of guitars, bass, drums and synths, Bernard sounding more comfortable as vocalist. His choppy, rapid Velvets guitar breaks are a joy too. A peak New Order album song. 

As is Love Vigilantes, the opening song on 1985's Low Life, forty years old this month. Bernard's Vietnam ghost story lyric is up there among his most off the wall, and the band, Stephen Morris in particular, are on it, the classic New Order sound perfected. Iron And Wine's 2009 Americana acoustic cover is a low key beauty, Sam Beams tripping the song down to the country that lies at its core. 

Thurston Moore's cover of Leave Me Alone, another Power, Corruption And Lies song, is from the B-side of a 7" single from 2019, recorded in Salford with 'local musicians and local pints', to quote Thurston. 

Dreams Never End is from Movement, the 1981 New Order debut that saw them trying to will themselves out of being Joy Division and into becoming something else. Hooky sings Dreams Never End, his bass and Bernard's guitar wrapping around each other, inching away from the shadow Ian's death cast of them. If a compilation of the band's 10 best album tracks were put together this song would be on it.

Lonesome Tonight was the B-side to Thieves Like Us, a superb 1984 single. Lonesome Tonight is its low key flip, melancholic, stripped down, beautiful, self- produced song that any other band would have given A- side status to and promoted to the world. The band's limitations forced them to experiment, to use their heads and the studio, and Factory put few, if any, demands on them to be commercial. From this they made truly great records. 

Regret was their 1993 comeback single, an indie- pop guitar riff with a singalong chorus. Sabres Of Paradise got to work on it and turned in a pair of epic remixes. Andrew Weatherall's genius is evident in both, especially the first remix- take the bassline, slow it down and find acres of space, loop a little guitar part and a line of vocal, and hey presto, turn New Order's indie- pop into Lee Perry style dub.

Vanishing Point was an album track, another one, that could have been a single, off 1989's era- defining Technique. Rich Lane's edit takes all the best bits, pumps them up and sends it off flying.

There are times when I think I never need to hear Blue Monday again. The band may feel the same. A few years ago Jack Butters, a friend of Rich Lane's, made an entirely unofficial edit that goes all thumpy and acidic, finding a new story inside the song, making it worth hearing all over again. 

Half An Hour Of Calexico

Calexico's dusty, Tex- Mex, border town songs have been lighting up my world since the late 90s and although I've dipped in and out over the years I went back in again for 2018's The Thread That Binds. There's a new one this year I still haven't heard. Joey Burns and John Convertino are based in Tucson, Arizona. They started out in Giant Sand with Howe Gelb and then struck out on their own as Calexico in 1996. Since then they've made thirteen albums and dozens of singles and EPs. Their early records really mined the traditional Latino sounds, mariachi crossed with American indie. Listening to this last night I was struck by how they manage to do despair and joy equally, a feat not all bands can do- from the Mariachi party horns of Crystal Frontier to the hopelessness and loss of Not Even Stevie Nicks, they span the full range of human emotion. 

Half An Hour Of Calexico

• Untitled 3 (Virus Style Mix)
• Minas De Cobre (For Better Metal)
• Not Even Stevie Nicks
• The Black Light
• Track 32 (Corona)
• A History Of Lovers 
• End Of The World With You
• Dub Latino
• Crystal Frontier (Widescreen)
• Alone Again Or

Untitled 3 (Virus Style Mix) is a Two Lone Swordsmen remix from 2001. Calexico returned the favour remixing Tiny Reminders No. 3.

Minas De Cobre (For Better Metal) and The Black Light are both from their 1998 album, The Black Light, a seventeen song introduction to the Calexico border noir world. 

Not Even Stevie Nicks is one of the saddest songs I've ever heard. It and Dub Latina are from their 2003 album Feast Of Wire, their best album in many ways. Track 32 is a cover of Corona by Minutemen, San Pedro's ever inspirational 80s punk rock heroes and was a hidden extra on the CD version. 

A History Of Lovers is from the 2005 mini album they recorded with Iron And Wine, a beautiful country lament. 

End Of The World With You is from 2018's The Thread That Binds, an album that was in part a response to Trump and the right wing, anti- immigrant populism that he peddled while president. 

Crystal Frontier was a single in 2000, a trumpet led celebration of the people that live in the border areas between the US and Mexico and their shifting lives. In 2008 NASA beamed it into space to wake up the crew of the space shuttle. 

Alone Again Or is a cover of Love's 1967 classic, released as a single in 2003. 

Iron and Wine 'Love Vigilantes'

Yesterday we had a cover of a Joy Division song, today a New Order cover. Love Vigilantes was the lead track on Lowlife, country-techno dead war hero song. One of their best. Beardy American alt-country man Iron and Wine takes out the techno and leaves us with a lovely ballad.

love-vigilantes.mp3