Low-Life | 
 enlarge
| Artist: New Order
Label: London
Category: Music
List Price: £9.99
Buy New: £4.19
You Save: £5.80 (58%)
New (38) Used (9) Collectible (1) from £2.98
Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 4749
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
UPC: 685738131327
EAN: 0685738131327
ASIN: B000046QAF
Release Date: January 4, 2000
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
| |
| Tracks:
| • | Sooner Than You Think | | • | Sub Culture | | • | Face Up | | • | Love Vigilantes | | • | Elegie | | • | Perfect Kiss | | • | This Time Of Night | | • | Sunrise |
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
With the 1985 release of Low Life, New Order put forth their most commercially accessible effort to date. While some of the dark-wave drippings of their Joy Division roots are evident, high-energy progressions, which would carry them for years to come, began to emerge here. Hits like "Perfect Kiss" and "Sub-Culture", with their synth hooks, club-stomping accents, and visceral lyrics, helped bridge the gap for growing synth-pop audiences who bolstered their success. Other refined techniques on the album became standard New Order conventions: sweeping analogue rolls, live and sequenced drum percussion, tight bass melodies, and edgy guitar leads. Sustained by a peerless level of emotional involvement, the vocals and lyrics further entice the listener with the obliquely nuanced style of Bernard Sumner. Standing the test of time, this release is a must-have in order to understand the origins of introspective pop-wave culture. --Lucas Hilbert
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 Fantastic, but not perfect..... December 29, 2007
New Gold Dreamer (Enfield, England)
Rating: 8/10
Best tracks: "This Time of Night", "Sunrise", "Elegia".
New Order's third album is possibly even better than Power, Corruption and Lies, and that was a bit of a classic! The band have found their niche with their trademark bass-fuelled, ringing-guitar embellished dance-pop, yet here the quartet admirably try a few new things; the opening "Love Vigilantes" is best described as electronic country and western, yet it's played out so effortlessly and wonderfully that it's nowhere near as gimmicky as that description might suggest. The lyrics are something else entirely, listen and find out for yourself!
Okay, now the song that follows is the greatest ever New Order song, and that's "The Perfect Kiss", but, but BUT!!! The version here on Low-Life just does not cut it, and for me, takes the album down a notch. The only way to hear this masterpiece of dance-pop music is to hear the glorious, complete 12" version, which clocks in at around nine minutes and is simply one of the finest songs ever created. This version has around four minutes cut out and boy are they missed; obviously the song's still great, even when cut this badly, but it's a shadow of its full-length version. The third verse is entirely gone, which means the song has a tenth of its original lyrical impact, and worst of all, the heavenly finale is cut to ribbons, and believe me when I say that the complete version of the song's finale is, and always will be, New Order's single most extraordinary moment. Go and listen to the 12" vinyl, or the LP version of retrospective Substance (the CD version still cuts the song, but only by forty seconds, which isn't as bad I suppose!), for the complete version. Phew! That's my rant over!
"This Time of Night" is up there with "Age of Consent" as being one of the absolute best New Order album tracks; how can I describe it? It's great to dance to, yet something inside it might make you weep as well, so heartbreakingly emotional it is. You could almost subtitle the song "Dancing with Tears in My Eyes" if some other, massively inferior song of around the same time hadn't already used it. Seriously though, this song has one of the best ever New Order choruses, and a miraculous piano section that'll have you wondering how mere humans created music this damn good! A wave of thunderous guitars are the heart of "Sunrise", which marks another departure for New Order, which introduces a heavy rock-influence to their dance sound. The band would make guitars and a rock-fuelled sound the basis for the majority of their next album, the disappointing Brotherhood, but at least on the basis of this rather splendid adrenaline rush of a song, the band proved that lots of guitars and New Order could be a very good thing indeed. The melancholic instrumental "Elegia" (which you can also hear in a mammoth, extended version on the band's Retro box set) is another song unlike anything New Order had done up until this point, and it's a very beautiful, moving piece. Incidentally, it was featured in the 1980's teen hit Pretty in Pink, along with non-album singles "Thieves Like Us" and "Shell-Shock"! "Sooner Than You Think" is a solid, decent song, no classic by any stretch of the imagination, but it's got that great mid-eighties New Order feel that's difficult to resist.
"Sub-Culture", which was also a single, is featured here in a relatively more restrained, less overblown incarnation than the one that most people who have heard the song will recognise. Some hate the single version of "Sub-Culture"; me, I love it, but I can see why some don't, since the production is pumped to the max and every element of the song is way over the top. I think I love it for the same reasons many don't. I think I prefer it to the Low-Life version, which sounds less exciting, less thrilling. If they'd had put on the single versions of this and "The Perfect Kiss", Low-Life would be getting a 5-star rating without a second thought.
A popular music magazine recently rated closing track "Face-Up" as one of the worst songs ever by a great band, which I think is a totally unfair criticism, as I think it makes for a delightfully offbeat finale, especially during that chorus, where Sumner yelps and whoops "Oh, how I cannot bear the thought of you!" over the jauntiest chorus imaginable!
Low-Life is another great New Order album; a clearly imperfect one, but home to some of the band's very best songs.
new order for beginners!!!! part 1 February 16, 2007
Mr. Nathan Armstrong
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
new order where out when i was in my teens..but never a huge temptation! (pun!) i bought substance and thought that was all i would need! now bored with the music of today i decided to revisit my past and see if i had missed any milestones..part of this was ordering the whole new order back catalogue!
this album is breathtaking...apologises to all die hard new order fans but this review is for all like me who never got it at the time!
i was one of them who believed ztt production was the best you could get but this album has has shook that belief! amazing production which over 20 years later sounds as fresh and new...huge soundscapes..perfection!
so to the album..."love vigilantes" opens the album and i dont like it...for the following reason..music should be an escape..this is about someone in the army..i dont relate...the new order sound is there to the fore but not for me!
"perfect kiss" i knew from substance..its one of my favourites! its pure ecstacy from the opening bars to the last! it soars and swoops..great lyrics..
"this time of night" is like a great pet shop boys number (this is new order for beginners remember)...not the best song but a great track!
"sunrise" starts like ultravox and descends into the cult at their best...the production is wonderful..it has huge soundscapes...i never want this song to end!
"elegia" is tubular bells for the 80s generation...i am not a fan of instrumentals but this is wonderful!
"sooner than you think" again is wonderful in "perfect kiss" way
"subculture" is a great song but i prefer the substance version
"face up" reminds me of yazoo meets depeche mode..at times..not the best song on the album but still good!
this is such an amazing album for 80s music fans...and new ones alike...i cannot fault it..the production is huge..the vocals amazing (always slightly desperate and a bit deadpan aka phil oakley...
its taken me 20 years to discover this pieceof pop history and i feel robbed! dont let you be!
Classic mid-eighties NO August 1, 2006
Steve (By DUNDEE Scotland)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Low-Life is perhaps not New Order's best album (Technique, I think takes that accolade), but its certainly one of the best, and it is definitely their most "eighties" sounding album. It sounds "big"- big synths, big drums and big vocals (Barney attemps something approaching a falsetto on some of the tracks). The album has a lovely lush sound, too, different from the understated Power, Corruption & Lies or the rather grimy, basic sounding Brotherhood.
The opener Love Vigilantes is easily one of NO's best songs of the time, a lovely rock ballad with unusually personal lyrics. The Perfect Kiss is simply magnficent, one of the great singles of the 1980s- lush, epic, and absolutely miles ahead of its time. Sooner than You Think is slightly plodding and gloomy, but things pick up with the rocky Sunrise. The second side begins with the startlingly beautiful Elegia, an instrumental reqiuem for Ian Curtis penned by Bernard Sumner. Sooner Than You Think has some gorgeous melodic interplay between bass, guitar and synths, with lovely percussive drumming from Steve, while Subculture has a more lo-fi sound- Barney's shaky vocals married to stuttering synths and Hooky's growling bass. Its better than the OTT John Robie mix on Substance, with backing vocals and sequencers cluttering up the mix. The closer Face Up, is an odd one- Barney's giddy vocals and the hiccupy sequencers make this a peculiar way to end the album, but its typical of NO's unevenness, really. Its this unneveness (and only 8 tracks- not exactly value for money!) which stops the album being a true classic, but its definitely worth having nonetheless if you're a fan of the eighties.
A True Classic! July 8, 2006
Nik (Hull, East Riding Of Yorkshire United Kingdom)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Low-Life was where I got onboard and 21 years later I'm still a fan! From the booming drum intro this album captures New Order at the top of their game.Love Vigilantes' story of war and religion now reminds you the more things change, the more they stay the same! The Perfect Kiss is both state of the art (in 1985!) and a tribute to Ian Curtis ("My friend he took his final breath, Now I know the perfect kiss is the kiss of death").This Time Of Night is hauntingly beautiful with Peter Hook's comic spoken intro ("I'm one of the few people I know who enjoys sports on television"). Sunrise, the best rocker since their Joy Division days with an intro that DEMANDS maximum volume.
Elegia is proof that New Order really were the 80's equivalent of Pink Floyd, a wonderful, slow building instrumental that may be their finest ever track. Sooner Than You Think still baffles me lyrically but it's a great track with the guitar - bass interplay effortlessly wonderful. Sub-Culture is epic, forget the AWFUL remix,the orginal version is where it's at. An awesome bass solo by Peter Hook reminds you just how good he can be, while Barney's lyrics are sharp and sour. Face Up is the archetypal New Order track; painfully sad and wonderfully joyful at the same time.If you only own one New Order album (you shouldn't there's several more you should have!), make it Low-Life.
Lowbrow genius! May 21, 2006
R. Nathan (Plymouth, UK)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Entranced and aching, swathed in strings and coiling bubbles of beats, jabbed with jagged lines and scratchy frustrations, a deep booming of the most innocent yet ingenious melody and amongst it all a little child lost - giggling and raging and weeping at the world.
`Lowlife' was New Order toying with perfect pop songs and minimalist art and funny stories and deviant disco and grinding rock and grungy electro-funk and exquisite beats. It's both knowing and naive, intricately complex yet effortlessly simple - an idiot savante lying in the gutter and inventing the stars.
Trying to encapsulate the majesty of Morricone with the primitive thrust of Iggy, the simple beauty and perfectionism of Kraftwerk with the ragged humanity and glory of Neil Young. Trying to put the past inside them and the future behind. It did all this and more, because somehow nothing quite explains where this music came from or where it belongs.
Many people won't quite get it, in fact, twenty years ago I didn't quite get it. I didn't pick up on `Love Vigilantes' poignant punchlines or brilliantly simplistic melodica solo. I somehow missed the awesome stillness of `Elegia' which builds from a fragile snowflake to an everest of ice. I overlooked the swaggering stance of `Sunrise'- a gothic spaghetti western shootout with God. I altogether ignored the glaring fact that the yearning, melancholy and menancing `This Time Of Night' is the best synth pop music ever made. Even now, even when it's possibly my favourite album of all, I still don't get it.....why I'm still singing and dreaming and wondering and buzzing.
|
| Dance Music News & U.K. Club Events | |
|
|
|
|
