Mid-Week Music: New Order - “Procession”
There is no end to this
I have seen your face
But I don't recognize all these things
You must have left behind
I have a playlist called “New Order Peak.” It comprises exactly six songs, from 3 singles. The first two songs are from the Procession/Everything’s Gone Green single, released in September 1981; the third and fourth are from a 12” single that was released in Belgium that featured “Everything’s Gone Green” as well as two additional b-sides, “Cries and Whispers” and “Mesh;” the final two are from the Temptation/Hurt single.
Yes, I believe the peak of New Order was in a handful of singles that bracketed their first album (one was released before Movement, the other two after). There is a vulnerability in Bernard Sumner’s voice, a bit awkward and unsure. His confidence was in full swing by Brotherhood, their fourth album, and the first of theirs which I didn’t love. I don’t rate anything of theirs after that.
It's a problem, you know
That's been there all your life
I've tried to make you see the world without you
That just turned black and white
The song layers a driving energy, propulsed by the steady bass and drums, with what on paper looks like a fairly poppy arrangement - C major and F major chords on a heavily-chorused string machine (a basic synthesizer meant to sound like bowed instruments like violins), followed by the major key melody, etc. Like most early New Order, you can pick this out pretty quickly on a keyboard without knowing how to play a keyboard (I did it on my little Casio keyboard as a pre-teen). You only need the white keys, and I’m pretty sure that was the appeal for the band, too. Yet somehow it is the epitome of bittersweet. Sumner’s flat vocal style and the lyrics contribute to this, yet the music itself never seems to resolve until most of it breaks off, leaving the opening chords.
At night it gets cold
And you'd dearly like to turn away
Escape that fails
And makes the wounds that time won't heal
I never put a lot of stock in New Order’s lyrics, but damn, do they have a lot of space to insert teenage (and adult) angst.
I was in my hometown last week, visiting my dad in the hospital. I drove his car back and forth from my teenage home to the hospital. I really wanted to feel the place again, as I had when I lived there. I felt like I should put a cassette of Gene Loves Jezebel or something in the car stereo (which did not have a cassette player) to get in the mood, but I didn’t. I mostly drove in silence. I couldn’t make that connection happen.
There is no end to this
I can't turn away another picture
But the scene
Is still the same
I think in sobriety I started to grow up and out of that intense desire to feel something that wasn’t myself. As a teen I was hungry for all the feelings. I tried them on in lyrics like this, in The Smiths, Tones On Tail, Depeche Mode. Then as an adult I wore masks, tried things on, postured. But getting sober for me was throwing that all aside and just being. I don’t think you have to get sober to cast those affectations aside, but it did it for me.
There is no room to move
Or try to look away
Remember, life is strange
And life keeps getting stranger every day
All that said, this is my favorite period of New Order. They’re cutting themselves free of the shadow of Ian Curtis; soon they’ll break free of Martin Hannett’s incredible and unique production and recording style which defined their first few years of recording. Maybe I’m hearing that tension. I have other favorite songs (and albums) by them, but this batch of singles touches me the most.
I love you,
David
