My favourite album: Power, Corruption & Lies by New Order

September 2020 · 4 minute read
My favourite albumNew OrderReviewContinuing our new series in which Guardian and Observer writers pick their favourite albums ever – with a view that you might do the same – Jude Rogers celebrates New Order's moving masterpiece

Be honest. When you're asked what your favourite album is, do you pick something impressive to show how smart you are? Or perhaps you plump for a record full of poetry, that says lots about your deeply interesting personality. I always go for a record I reach for whatever the mood or weather, full of naive, off-key vocals, keyboards riffs that wear their influences heavily, whose best song culminates in the lyric: "I caught you at a bad time/ So why don't you piss off?"

Power, Corruption & Lies was released in May 1983. To the casual observer, three musicians who made it – now joined by Gillian Gilbert on keyboards – were still under the shadow of what happened three years before. The basket of roses on its cover, taken from a painting by sleeve designer Peter Saville, also looks commemorative; a late wreath for Ian Curtis, perhaps. But after their 1981 debut album, Movement, two singles had helped Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris break away from Joy Division: 1982's breezily beautiful Temptation, later to have a second life on the Trainspotting soundtrack, and a 12in single based on the bassline from Sylvester's You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real), the rhythms of Klein and MBO's club classic, Dirty Talk, and a sample of synthesised voices from Kraftwerk's Uranium. Released in March that year, Blue Monday was not included on the album that came out two months later. This, in many ways, makes me love it even more.

After all, this album reveals a band finding their feet, finding their sound, moving on – a process that intimately involves the listener. The group do this naively, awkwardly, playfully – qualities that lie at the heart of this album's charm. Age of Consent opens with one of Hook's most joyful basslines, and Sumner asking someone or something to "please let me go"; it's hard not to think of the past when you notice this. The Village is similarly, blissfully innocent, introducing a moment when a "new life turns towards you", before bubbling over with simple, major chords. Also, there are few lyrics as genuinely lovely as: "Our love is like the flowers/ The rain, the sea and the hours."

The ghost of Ian Curtis lingers, nevertheless. We All Stand and Ultraviolence could be offcuts from Closer, their titles suggesting the work of JG Ballard and Anthony Burgess. In both, you can hear Sumner struggle – often painfully – under the shadow of the man who came before him. But hearing this transition is moving and fascinating. "Time to go, time to go," he concludes, at the end of the latter, as programmed beats bursts through the stormclouds.

586 is even more revealing. What starts as an instrumental that could easily fit on Joy Division's 1978 debut, Unknown Pleasures, suddenly fades at 1.45; the tight, sharp electro that follows is utterly thrilling, like new life coming into being.

And then, like a rainbow from heaven, comes Your Silent Face, its first shimmers reminiscent of Kraftwerk's Europe Endless. A synthesiser melody follows, wide-eyed with wonderment, then a melancholy melodica, sighing in the breeze. Even though the lyrics are far from Pulitzer prize-winning – Sumner's cursing sounds sweet, as well as silly, by today's standards – there are few songs that sound so utterly transcendent, and few moments in music that carry so much emotion. Here is "no hearing or breathing, no movements, no colours, just silence"; here is peace among men; here is a new, bold beginning.

You can write your own review of Power Corruption & Lies on our brand new album pages: once you're signed into the Guardian website, visit the album's dedicated page.

Or you could simply star rate it, or add it to one of your album lists. There are more than 3m new pages for you to explore as well as 600,000-plus artists' pages – so if, for example, Joy Divison are more your thing, or Kraftwerk, or Northside, say, then head there, find that act's albums and get to work ...

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