You got (to) love Technique

For me it was between Dream Attack and Vanishing Point, but i had to go with Dream Attack in the end.

I can't do this.

It's easier if you just pick "Dream Attack".

SUCH a great album from start to end, but it's "Dream Attack" for me.

Though, the opening of "Fine Time" is superfantabuluscious!!!!

Easy poll this one. "Dream Attack" without a doubt

Wow. now THIS is consensus.

Everytime there seems to be major consensus in the thread itself, lurkers come in and bump the vote up for something unexpected.

hey baby
sophisticated lady

that whole bit would win any poll ever.

dream attack by far

wow. so little love for "vanishing point", a song that still makes me gape, open-mouthed, like a loon.

if i could have a second place, it'd be "run".

was Technique this loved by fans in 1989?

Yes.

I think I'll probably go with Vanishing Point, though I'm a long way from being sure.

go on.

I'm worried no one else will vote for Love Less.

you need another login. like this one.

NO

mr disco by default

"Vanishing Point", just because "Round and Round" will do fine without my help. Toughest ILM poll choice yet. This album is beautiful.

too hard. it's all one record for me.

Easily Vanishing Point for me.

Another for Vanishing Point - c'mon!

But, really, greatest overall album by best band ever. Probably.

i think you're probably right.

certainly, for me, it opened up and changed everything ... which was a mixed blessing because although it sent me off searching for guitars and beeps and bleeps and beauty everywhere, i never found anything that quite measured up.

i wore out my vinyl copy. but i MP3d it anyway and it's the one i still listened to, because every scratch and crackle is an essential part of it now ;)

i think rjg is right, it's 'mr disco', but i already voted 'fine time'.

I went with Guilty Partner in the end. There's something about it.

"I always know that you'll come back to me"

All the Way or Round and Round... and I think the latter pips it. But Vanishing Point as well... hmmm.

"Guilty Partner" is so fantastic.

For some reason, despite this being one of the albums I've listened to the most in my life, I cannot remember some of the track titles on this. In my mind, I always confuse 'Guilty Partner', 'All the Way' and 'Love less'.

Well, they're not the most obvious of titles.

I've only just realised that not a single one is taken from the lyrics.

A lot of New Order songs pull that trick.

Yeah, is there a single song on this album that does?

Is the first New Order track to have the title in the song..

Ultraviolence?

Did PC&L come out before "Confusion"?

yes

today I would've voted for "Mr. Disco." Those synth chimes on the chorus – man.

Also: has Bernard ever sung this well on an album, like, ever?

He does as well on most of WFTSC.

Exactly what I was gonna say

Listening to it now, it's not making things any easier!

"Don't waste my money, baby" classic lyric!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

My first ILM poll has been swamped by others. :(

I think Round & Round is still going to win.

All the way, narrowly from Fine Time and Run.
Just 'cos "it takes years to find the nerve to be apart from what you've done" has always been my personal mantra to overcome that feeling of waking up with an awful hangover and remembering all the humiliating things you said and did the night before.

I always heard "...a part of what you've done"

i think 'vanishing point' will win.

Hmm Hi Dere seems to be with me (almost). I'll listen tonight. I hope it's as I remember it, or it will lose all its soothing power!

I totally voted for Mr. Disco, which is only the coolest song name ever.

All the Way takes it for me as well. Late surge?

i'm not surprised. it's the single, and it's dancey. i couldn't see 'round & round' winning. also it's a very close contest.

I don't like Fine Time :(

Round & Round was also a single.

The spread of votes reflects the greatness of the record.

That is a surprise. I feel compelled to link to this review once more:

I am fully prepared to believe the lamb bleating at the end of this track is Christ applauding.

Hmph:

Melody Maker Review
It begins. It thumps with glee, it swirls with lackadaisical intensity. "You're much too young to be a part of me, you're much too young to get a hold on me." And never have veterans sounded so brilliantly arrogant, masters so eager. Jesus. "Technique" is so effortlessly GREAT, so languidly heroic, so vibrant and thrilling despite itself, that one wishes one could weep. As the Austrian philosopher Rose Royce once commented: "I'm in love (and I love the feeling)." That's what this is like. I first hear it on a train from Waterloo and as the power stations and football pitches fly past, I want to get out and race the train to the sound of this perfect, perfect music. New Order know that the times throw a malfunctioning grey electric blanket over our emotion, but also that the slightest wriggle could be the one to turn it on again. They do this wriggle repeatedly, on every jauntily fatigued song, like they've done it many times before. Only on "Technique", they do it more skilfully and confidently than ever. This leads not to plushness or sumptuousness, but to a tumbling pumping river of their strengths, their weaknesses, their glib grandeur. Never have New Order sounded so little like people from Manchester, so much like gods. It's clear by now that, though they seem able to clean up in any medium, there are two bas(s)ic New Order modes of transportation - the pop one which is like The Cure ripping off New Order, and the disco one which is like Shannon ripping off New Order. Both are severally represented here without any falling between two stools. Their feel is whisker-fine, their surges are princely. Albrecht's fragmented and victimised, but resilient, paper-mache poetry hauls itself up for what stings like one final summation of the shameful agonies of being male, of being prey to love and lust with equal sincerity/severity. Of acknowledging a bewildering sense of futility but still for some reason writing things down. When I say "male" I don't mean to imply that a "female" couldn't have written these simple yearnings and elegies, but that she wouldn't have started from the same angle. Undoubtedly "Technique" is inspired by a vulnerable, peculiarly boyish, somewhat petulant romanticism. from start to finish, from (heart on) sleeve (a cherub) to beaty monster inside. "I can't find you, I can't find my peace of mind without you." As ever New Order temper Barney's pseudo-metaphysical couplets with a deceptive flippancy. (this is what always made them better and deeper than Joy Division.) "Fine Time " bubbles in, fascistically and facetiously making you dance. "Sophisticated lady, you got style and you got class, but most of all..." We strain to hear the punchline. We want to hear the punchline. We need to hear the punchline. "...Love technique." Ah, that'll be the title then. I am fully prepared to believe the lamb bleating at the end of this track is Christ applauding. From then on it's irresistible, New Order marching through eight effervescing asphalt plains. There isn't a sub-GREAT moment to be found. When the majestic swooning "Run" "takes it down" you know that if the modernist ensemble come rushing back in with all swooshes blazing before the song fades, you'll start giggling at how marvellous all this is getting. They do. You do. you're sold. you're buying. You're coming out for spring. "All The Way" is gently awesome, precision guitars and rhythms levitating Albrecht's camp grandiloquence: "It takes years to find the nerve to be apart from what you've done, to find the truth inside yourself and not depend on anyone." There are many confessionals regarding strain, age, doubt, determination. "Love Less" and the probable next single "Round And Round" (a shimmering white funk whirlwind, if whirlwinds can shimmer, which I'm sure they can) build an apposite bridge between sentiment and dynamism. The latter is again evocative of travel, of flirting with life's hugeness. New Order are all about those minutes when you feel like a winning underdog and you knew all along you could do it. Of course, there's some miserablism. The beautiful (no other word) "Vanishing Point" and "Dream Attack" allow the lights up at the end of the party and, well, things are really quite manageable. They don't get morose. They get serene. Authentically. Before this there's a snarling "Guilty Partner", a bloodrush rather self-effacingly called "Mr Disco", and the aforementioned and utterly regal "Run", possibly their most poised and potent sculpure since "Thieves like Us". Play it loud and obsessive. Ultimately New Order are a subjective experience. A hundred lines here provoke productive self-examination and the hygiene of the sound encourages more anima projections than "La Boheme". I'm not being indulgent here (not by my standards) but you should be when you listen to it. And it swings, did I say it swings? "My life ain't no holiday, I've ben through the point of no return. I've seen what the man can do, I've seen all the hate of a woman too." Yes Bernard, we're all growing up. England's finest reluctant pop poet. I mean it. When he hits menopause there'll be a hell of a novel in this man. Meanwhile, the propulsion of the grooves is crisper than ice, more active than anarchy, swaggering on crutches. When New Order are this GREAT, this effortlessly, the rest might as well go home and peel onions or something. "Technique" is the state of the embers of the Eighties, mystique and mistakes merging, kissed by the ruby lips of God. "Technique" is a rare and ravishing triumph.

Chris Roberts

<a href="http://kicktotheego.blogspot.com/2003_06_01_archive.html";>It's hard to read without a break...</a>

Oh, well that's sort of better.

This is perfect

New Order are all about those minutes when you feel like a winning underdog and you knew all along you could do it.

This is utterly OTM

so ... is it just me thinks that's a pretty ropey, sub-STUDENT piece of writing (the odd fantastic line, such as the one baaderonixx quotes, excepted)? i agree heartily with the sentiment, but i don't think much of the expression -- par breaks or no.

listened to the album this morning, though. it is approaching my ideal of sonic perfection. i really don't think anything else will ever beat it.

i think it's a really good review. it communicates how good the album is. it doesn't try and contextualize it. it is studenty in a good way. doesn't hedge its bets. sometimes -- not often enough! -- enthusiasm is called for.

dude. you're talking to the guy who called the wedding present "the most important british rock band of the past 20 years". i know about enthusiasm :)

Yeah I don't know Grimly. I find the enthusiasm in this review quite infectious. Obviously, I'm already drunk on the kool-aid but I'd probably be pretty intrigued if I hadn't heard the album before.

I'm afraid I may have broken this poll by absentmindedly voting for Fine Time when I meant to vote for Round And Round. Putting three songs on 12 votes.

STEWARD'S INQUIRY!

I am fully prepared to believe the lamb bleating at the end of this track is Christ applauding.

!!!

(Assuming it's the Christ I'm thinking of, the review is worth it for this line alone.)

wow great showing for DREAM ATTACK. i'd never have guessed. Tune!

I always heard it as “you’ve got a lot of technique”
which actually works a bit better for me
so I think I’m going to keep hearing it that way

thanks

a bit surprised fine time won this actually, but it’s a great opener

Maybe you'd write me a letter
And tell me why I never met you
Our rendezvous just ended in sorrow
Without you there's no tomorrow.

About time for a relisten. (It's weird to realize I'm seeing the current version this year when the last time I saw them was for this tour.)

Yeah, I hadn't heard it in ages until a drive home last night. Late Sunday afternoon melancholia + softening weather.

Bizarre poll order, generally (but not specifically) about the reverse of my order of preference

Bizarre poll triangle