| New Order – Guilty Partner Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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The brooding drive of this song evokes the true deep dark madness of hopeless devotion. The absolute depth, the bottom, the delusion. This is about being hooked on a manipulative lover like a drug (drug parallels which are quite apparent). The image of someone with an outreached hand to a drug on a nightstand is evoked by this track. Some of the first lines admits one of the hardest things humans can do: to admit to being not just wrong but severely deluded (for probably years). "But Loooooord it don't come easy/To Admit I was wrong/It took me far too long.". A final realization requiring Sumner to say "listen to me, I know what I'm saying" before that as if outside observers were scoffing saying 'yeah right' at his ever getting out of his delusion. The two before and after parts of the singer divide the song: The chorus that repeats and repeats, emphasizing the dark depths in that repetition, is the singer in his 'blind to betrayal/blind to gaslighting' absolute bottom. This part is charged and has a dark rasp that conveys that unwavering madness. " I know what it takes to make you my lover" sounds as if the singer is convincing himself that he has power in this situation just because he's able get his drug back and maintain the illusion for a short period that all is well. The parts where Sumner sings in a floating dreamy tone is the part where he is pulling himself out of this delusion. The first verse and the verse starting with "You once said to me." In that verse the lines "You once said to me/That I was a cruel man/And you know/ That I almost believed you/I was blind, and I couldn't see/ You took my sight from me." seems to show a clear gaslighting situation. He says these lines as if in a haze. So Guilty Partner is a continuation of Round & Round the track before. It's as if this level of madness and disorientation needed more explicating. Many songs on Technique are about this relationship. Maybe that is Technique's great gift to us. It's an attempt to understand and express the deep profound scramble that happens in relationships with truly manipulative unfeeling (sociopathic even) people. Pinning it all on something, hoping they are different, hoping they will change. Guilty Lover's greatness comes in this attempt to capture the craving hunger and mad despair of deluded hopeless devotion. The propulsion of the bass, loud drums hits and the oddly pleasant yet macabre mandolin all combine to give us a picture so bleak it's make us recoil at the darkness. At least we know that he has extracted himself from this situation but we feel the shock still in the past like a trauma. The other Sumner is past it, but the feeling of being painted the guilty partner still haunts even though he is now aware that it was the other person who was the guilty partner. Damn. |
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| New Order – Round & Round Lyrics | 7 years ago |
| In New Order's "Round and Round"'s club frenzy edifys us about internal madness. Doubts, vexations and depression swirl round and round in a cerebral jungle. The innocent has been cruelly gaslighted and left to piece together how someone could be capable of such callousness. ["Now you can't tell me what's going on/And that I am weak while you are strong/ What is it you need, that makes your heart bleed/Do you really know? 'Cause it doesn't show."] "What is it you need?" predates the "How much do you need?" from Music Complete's soaring "Restless". The people who chase material wealth are curiosities and vexing to New Order. Technique's previous song "Loveless" has the longing wondering line about working a lifetime for someone and them not even caring. This treatment can rip the innards out of you and New Order's song captures the mental state that goes along with that. [The picture you see is no portrait of me. It's too real to be shown to someone I don't know. And it's driving me wild. It makes me act like a child] Some of the great lines ever highlighting the maddening effects of cruelty. Back to square one, back to being a "child" and acting out. You thought you were all grown up and mature. A cruel person/act slices and cuts you down just like that. "Round and Round"'s madness is similar to "Mr. Disco"'s search through the club as "Loveless" longing and plangency parallel "Run". The high-pitched left ear right ear back-n-forth go-gos, fluttering rimshots, synth stabs, booming bounce and compression all swirl to give "Round & Round" the image of a person's brain all-consumed with millions of pinballing criss-crossing questions and vexations. A masterpiece song! | |
| New Order – Love Less Lyrics | 7 years ago |
| @[Gimodon:19556] Interesting to read it with this interpretation in mind. ;) Though "I watch every step that you make/To find some other fool you can take" makes me think differently. | |
| New Order – Love Less Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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Love Less has this wonderful plangent quality perfectly complementing Sumner's mystified voice/lyrics. His eyes are downcast, a man confounded by the distant cold behavior of someone he thought he knew. The first lines reflect his earlier naivete "There was a time I call before/When all I knew was what I saw" . This is a revelation so obvious in hindsight that he calls the time he was unaware "before" assuming an 'after'. "The keeper of a major key/I lived is a town called Liberty". He lived in a time of freedom, in a utopia called "Liberty" i.e. his surface perception. A major key is the key to the city. Ignorance is bliss here and he's equating a sense of freedom with his illusioned state. The singer has worked really hard (musical emphasis on hard) to give his partner "anything that you see". He's exalted this person, yet they "won't even talk to" him now. "Can't you see/Why don't you look at me/ It's not your right to be/ so much my enemy" are lines conveying his desire to shake this person and ask them where their basic morality/decency is. "I knew that I could never give/ You knew that you could not forgive/ No price or pride would fall before/ A ten foot wall without a door" --> These lines are one that I'm having a bit of trouble with. But from what I can make out there is a bitter stalemate between the two. (Divorce battle?) The first two lines convey a trench warfare position. And the last two phrases convey how entrenched it is ("no price or pride"). A door-less ten-foot wall, an impossible physical barrier used to convey the complete emotional turning away of the two. Now hip to this person's ways he, "watches every move step that you make" ("every step" is calculating), "to find some other fool you can take" implying that yes he was a fool who's now more the wiser. The title is broken Love Less as opposed to Loveless. (Reverse it and it's Less Love) This song sounds more pointed and more directed at someone. Lyrically it's a little below par for NO. It's greatness comes from the plangent quality of the music and especially in the long drawn out lines like "Caaan't you see/ Why don't yoouuuu look at me/" That's where just reading the lyrics will leave you without the grasp of the music and shows why pop music can hold more artistic potential than poetry. This forlorn pop song conveys someone reaching out trying to make sense of life's vexing ways. A moral stance from a moral person who believes in basic decency, basic morality, basic respect, trying to understand how someone could blithely disregard these seemingly common sense values. All halfway moral people got to deal with that. |
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| New Order – All The Way Lyrics | 7 years ago |
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From the jump, the driving propulsion of this song, is a dizzying realization and revelation. This is spiritual pop! "All the way" reflects a dazzling wonderfully mature grounding. The ethereal jangles supporting the chorus convey the wonder of self-acceptance and/or self-forgiveness ("to be apart from what you've done" can be taken that way as well). "To find the truth inside yourself/and not depend on anyone" (The emphasis "truth" and "inside your-seelf" !!). It takes years to find this "nerve", in fact, it can be a monumental reach. New Order is always great at broadly painting the societal forces that bear on us so strongly in simple yet profound ways. One of their great lines is "lecture me with poetry/and tell me that I can" reflecting the bromides of smiling middle class culture patronizingly telling you 'you can do it'. "Parasites and litricites" only savaging because they can. This lecturing of the small-minded (and maayyybe the music press), academia and the hanger-ons who want to tear you down is all a blur here. It's a lot of noise as Sumner's voice brushes them off with the sardonic "it doesn't take a genius" and "it don't take no Houdini" lines. Sumner reflects on this low-level pettiness, realizes it's vacuity ("I don't give a damn about what all those people say"), and points to a new direction, a wonderful new order. As I read it, the title "All the Way" is a commitment to go all the way with yourself. The lingering keyboard lines create a new world after this realization. And those guitar riffs after the second chorus are uplifting turbo-boosters into pop paradise. This is one of those pop songs that no matter what happens in life, I always got it in my backpocket. It's a life-saving song all the way. |
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| New Order – Fine Time Lyrics | 7 years ago |
| New Order contemplates the moral universe of the dance floor, and by extension party life. This song exemplifies that contemplation, focusing on fascination with youth, specifically the vexation of a relationship with an experienced youth (not just a groupie per se but maybe so). Sumner in 1989 is 33 and New Order makes a club rocker that deals with mysterious youth's draw. Some might assume that by your 30s the magnetic pull of youth might wear off, yet Sumner illustrates more complexity. The first lines point to an obvious societal red line "youre much too young/to be a part of me." Yet the following two show Sumner's vexation "youre much to young/ to get a hold on me" It's a convincing of oneself of aged wisdom yet there is doubt there. Then "Your much too young/To mess around with me" shows shift of view with a lingering double meaning. That societal red line is there but "mess around with me" has a darker revenge connotation as well. The metaphorical youth's shape shifting and the singer is in the midst of realizing his conflicting emotions. It's rattling internally. Lust (as exemplified by the deep low down voice in the "that's why I love you baby" and "looove technique") add to the swirling dance bounce and to the ineluctable temptations of party life. This picture of grey zone club morality paves the way for the burst of "All the Way"'s great "it takes years to find the nerve/ to be apart from what you've done". A one-two punch: before and after? A breaking free?? | |
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