Track Listing

1. Your Silent Face
2. Ecstasy
3. Leave Me Alone
4. Age Of Consent
5. We All Stand
6. Village
7. 586

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3452 in Music
• Released on: 2000-01-24
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
New Order took the gothic overtones and deadpan synthesisers from their previous incarnation as Joy Division and updated them via the New York club scene. To a nation of dour, angst-ridden, raincoat wearers, this album gave them their daily bread with a buttering of disco. In retrospect, it was a brave idea; in reality, Power, Corruption & Lies' success is the reward of artistic endeavour, of maverick musicians pushing forward and creating a sublime work. These songs are hypnotic dance tracks that vary the pace enough to intrigue bedroom-pop listeners and satisfy the club cognoscenti. They combine despair and celebration with a subtle melodic grace that has all the guile of a pocket-sized orchestra. It's streets ahead of its time and is one the best examples of why New Order are one of the most important and essential bands of their time. --Ben Clancy

Customer Reviews

Soldier waiting
This possesses a particular sound that resonates through all the tracks, a confident electronic groove that indicates a band that has found its collective feet and knows the kind of music it needs to make. It sounds fabulous. That flowery cover was great too.

The first fantastic New Order album, one of their best....
Rating: 8/10

Best tracks: "Age of Consent", "Your Silent Face", "Ecstasy", "The Village".

New Order really came into their own with their second album; their debut Movement was perfectly fine despite the shadow of former band Joy Division looming heavy over its shoulders, but it took the likes of non-album singles "Everything's Gone Green", "Temptation" and "Blue Monday" for the band to emerge as a whole new entity. Now New Order weren't just Joy Division without Ian Curtis, they were a whole new band, and Bernard Sumner was the lead singer through and through. Sumner's vocals are, I suppose, an acquired taste; when I first heard New Order, I thought they were a great band with a struggling singer! Not any more, I hasten to add; Sumner's tender, fragile voice and charming lyrics are the true heart and soul of the band, while the rest provide the muscle and drive, and now I regard him as one of my favourite ever singers. You don't have to have a traditionally great voice in order to be a truly great singer/artist. As talent/reality shows these days prove, singers with good voices are ten a penny, those with genuine character and personality appear to be less common.

As soon as the wonderful "Age of Consent" chimes and funks its way into earshot, the golden era of this most special of bands is well and truly in effect. Yeah, "Age of Consent" is a real classic, probably one of the absolute finest album tracks the band ever did; the guitars ring and sparkle, the bass drives and drives on, the keyboards shimmer and delight, while Stephen Morris' drums just keep it all going as strong as ever. "We All Stand" doesn't appear to be a favourite amongst New Order fans, though I quite like this dirge of a song, it's atmospheric and adds variety to the album, even if it isn`t one of the band`s best. "The Village" is a Hi-NRG workout that's far too much fun to consider resisting; everything here clicks splendidly, with great synths and bags of energy to boot. "5-8-6" is essentially "Blue Monday" but taken down different corners and routes to the point where it's clearly cut from the same cloth, but it remains its own song altogether; I've heard that the `danger-danger' skipping track effect just past the two minute mark was quite a new trick back in 1983, so I'm assuming a lot of people must have thought their vinyl was busted upon first listen!

Side Two boasts the terrific, grand "Your Silent Face", previously known as "KW1", which stood for "The Kraftwerk One" as a nod to one of the band's strongest influences. To be honest, this song is so good I prefer it to almost everything Kraftwerk themselves have done, and I think they're a terrific group. Huge, mountainous keyboards herald the most panoramic, widescreen song New Order had created to that point, while those sad, personal lyrics (not to mention that infamous final kiss-off near the end) bring it all back down to earth. "Ultraviolence" is the darkest song on the album, a lot like the majority of the preceding album but with the strong dance elements that New Order were embracing at the time and beyond. To be honest, this is nothing special, though the beats and rhythms are strong throughout. "Ecstasy" on the other hand is very, very special; a surreal, vocoder-fuelled mix of dark and light that's one of my personal favourite New Order songs; it's got a terrific, nocturnal feel, strange vocal effects and jittery, nervous guitars that make it a out-and-out success. "Leave Me Alone" has sad chord-changes that are a little reminiscent of Joy Division, albeit with that bittersweet New Order touch that essentially makes the song less claustrophobically dark and more romantically sad; this is a decent, emotional closer.

Usually praised for their non-album singles over anything else, New Order often get dismissed as a band whose albums weren't very good, or at the very least inconsistent, and while this has a few tracks that aren't as good as what surrounds them, it's still a very solid, strong album, and one of the band's best.

##Three miles to go-o-o##
After Technique, Power, Corruption & Lies is the next best New Order album. Fragile, delicate, and tentative, its the band blinking into the sunlight after the shadows of Joy Division.

The opener Age of Consent is a racy opener which declares the band's identity as different from Movement's pseudo-Joy Division gloom. There are plenty of other highlights. We All Stand ambles along sleepily, Your Silent Face is delicately sombre, Ecstacy features some shimmering drum-work from Steven Morris, and Leave Me Alone is one of the best songs New Order have ever written- a beautiful bitter-sweet lament driven by Hook's two-note bassline.

Thankfully, the UK version doesn't contain Blue Monday, which I think spoils the flow of the album, which is delicate and tentative, wheareas Blue Monday is such an obvious hit single- a stormer which I dont think fits with the rest of the album. New Order left it off the initial release, and for good reason.