Hear Bernard Sumner’s isolated vocals on New Order track ‘True Faith’
New Order is an outfit rightly hailed as one of the finest acts this tiny island called Great Britain has ever produced. Formed from the smoking ashes of the fleeting cultural juggernaut that was Joy Division after frontman Ian Curtis’ suicide in 1980, the three surviving members of Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris, reacted in the best way possible: by going back to the drawing board, refusing to accept defeat and coming back with a vengeance.
However, New Order’s brilliance does not just centre around the former Joy Division members. Arguably, the final piece in the puzzle, the person who really pulled things together, was Gillian Gilbert, who was invited into the fold in October 1980 and took up the role of keyboardist. This concentration on the electronic instrument allowed the band to put the spectre of Joy Division to the side and follow the influence of the likes of Kraftwerk and David Bowie’s ‘Berlin Trilogy’, closer than ever before.
Fittingly, the group took the name New Order, and despite the aspersions from some that it was a nod to National Socialism, it was actually a name denoting the new path that the band were following in the face of the tragedy they had just experienced.
The band’s first outfit was the bleak 1981 cut ‘Ceremony’, which was backed by the B-side ‘In a Lonely Place’. Because the material was written only weeks before Curtis’ death, people were unsure of what direction they were taking, as it appeared that their recent past was still hanging heavy over them. However, before too long, everything would change.
The group released their debut album, Movement, in 1981. Shortly afterwards, they visited New York City, which would inspire a tremendous stylistic shift in the group as they were introduced to the exciting sounds of electro, freestyle and post-disco. Added to this new way of thinking, Morris taught himself drum programming, and together with the addition of Gilbert, who was a master of the synthesiser, these elements altered the direction of the band’s career and, by proxy, changed popular culture forever.
Following that period where the band found their stride, they went from strength to strength, releasing a plethora of classics, including ‘Age of Consent’ and ‘Temptation’. Although the band have been very consistent over their career, it was the 1980s and 1990s in which they really shone, and one of their most iconic cuts came in the form of the uplifting 1987 hit ‘True Faith’.
One of the definitive tracks of the decade and of New Order’s back catalogue, it features a classic Bernard Sumner chorus, one that is simple but incredibly effective, coming with the memorable opening lines: “I used to think that the day would never come / I’d see delight in the shade of the morning sun”. It’s one of Sumner’s best vocal performances, and now, luckily for us, his isolated vocals have been unearthed so you can understand how they’d sound without the textured instrumentation, shedding light on how strong his voice actually is.
