Put The Needle On The Record - Week #15

Put The Needle On The Record Week #15 New Order - Power Corruption & Lies

I think we all have albums we haven't played in years and this feature, hopefully, will encourage you to play the featured album we choose each week.

For this weeks feature we go back to May 1983 and the New Order album, "Power Corruption & Lies". As we know New Order was formed after the death of the Joy Division singer Ian Curtis (if you haven't seen the film "Control" about Ian Curtis & Joy Division you need to see it). The three other members of Joy Division, Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and Peter Hook wanted to carry but under a different name, Gillian Gilbert became a member of New Order at this point too, the rest, as they say, is history.

"Power Corruption & Lies" was the 2nd New order album and the follow up to "Movement", which, despite being a huge Joy Division/New Order fan, is an album I have never liked, PCL however is my favourite New Order album and it saw a change in their sound, with the introduction of more synths and drum machines.

New Order were famous for not including any singles on their early releases and as such no tracks were released as singles off it, also the bands name and album title weren't included on the sleeves of their earlier albums, however, they did release the monster hit "Blue Monday", the biggest selling 12 inch single of all time and of course a regular in their live set list. It was added as a bonus track on CD editions of the album in later years.

By the way back in 1980 I had the pleasure of chatting to Anthony H Wilson (Factory label boss) and we discussed the music of Joy Division and in particular the single "Love Will Tear Us Apart", my favourite single of all  time.

I like the entire album and the highlights for me are "Age Of Consent", "The Village" and the Kraftwerkesque "Your Silent Face" (which contained the brilliant line..."you caught me at a bad time, so why don't you piss off".

The album peaked at number 4 in the UK albums chart.

Track listing

Age Of Consent
We All Stand
The Village
5 8 6
Your Silent Face
Ultraviolence
Ecstasy
Leave Me Alone

So if you have the album in your collection and have n't played it in a while, dig it out and give it a spin!