Everything's in Order

New Order have had a career spanning four decades, releasing ten studio albums and winning a handful of NME awards along the way. Now, the rockers arrive in Dubai.

An outdoor arena in the North-West of England was packed for a much-loved band’s hometowngig. The frontman was 60 years old, introducing songs as old as some of the audience, but no-one was sitting down – and everyone knew the words.

Last summer, New Order weren’t simply playing to a Manchester crowd hungry for nostalgia, they were as eager to please as a fresh young band with everything to prove. Bernard Sumner will never be a vivacious frontman – he’s too long of tooth and dry of wit for that. But, as his band mates (minus, infamously, low-slung bassist Peter Hook) rattled through songs old and new they felt as vibrant, exciting – and excited – as the classic New Order of the 1980s.

Perhaps such renewed vigour came from their highest charting album in more than 20 years. It was certainly no coincidence that 2015’s Music Complete was a bonefide return to form, a nod to the poignant electronic pop that made them so influential in the 1980s and early 1990s. Tutti Frutti, Restless, People On The High Line – any of these new songs could sit happily alongside the career highlights of Blue Monday, True Faith or Bizarre Love Triangle.