Word: sumner
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...Perpetual motion may help to save Sumner and his colleagues from that fate. This spring and summer, New Order top festival bills across Europe and the U.S., playing alongside young American bands like Interpol and the Killers, and British newcomers Bloc Party - all of whom are clearly influenced by Joy Division and New Order. The Scissor Sisters' Ana Matronic can be heard lending vocals to the New Order track Jetstream on Sirens' Call, while British music mag NME, a champion of young bands, this year honored the New Order veterans with a Godlike Genius Award for their career achievements...
...dark memory will occlude the band's sunnier disposition - May 18 marks 25 years since Joy Division's lead singer Ian Curtis hanged himself. His suicide ended the short but revolutionary run of New Order's precursor. Formed in 1977 by working-class Mancunians Curtis, Sumner, bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris, Joy Division embraced the social anger and energy of punk and took it in a different direction - improvising with electronic sound and synthesizers. The band was on the cusp of commercial success, but Curtis, an epileptic who was tortured by his failing marriage, took a sad shortcut...
...soundtracks continue to win new adherents, too. "There's a sense of discovery for young bands, because Joy Division isn't that well-known commercially," says Sumner. Adds guitarist Phil Cunningham, a recent addition to the New Order lineup: "Everyone's got to have a starting point, and if you're looking for something that's emotionally driven, why not look back to Joy Division and New Order...
...Reformed as New Order in the weeks after Curtis' death, with guitarist Sumner at the mic, the band refused fans' calls to rerecord or play Joy Division tunes. "It would have been too painful; it reminded you of Ian too much," explains Sumner. He adds that the group needed to prove it could make it on its own living merits: "I didn't fancy being an Ian Curtis impersonator, really." That was never a danger. The 1983 song Blue Monday proved a smash hit with clubgoers - becoming the biggest-selling 12-in. single ever - and New Order further anchored themselves...
...right having a really great interesting past, but you have to think about the future and the present," Sumner says. "You must make sure you're still saying something." The musical vibrancy of Sirens' Call offers proof that New Order have a lot left to express. The upbeat Krafty, the more melancholic Who's Joe? and Hey Now What You Doing, the guitar-driven neo-punk Working Overtime and the pop masterpiece title track show New Order at the top of their game, using bright instrumentation and probing lyrics to make music that is emotionally and physically moving...