Electronic, "Get The Message" - C/D?

Classic -- I can't imagine there will be too many duds on this thread. Maybe we can talk about where "Electronic" would rank among the New Order albums.

Wow. I feel old now, thanks.

Anyway, I've mentioned this song on other threads:

'Choons that have it all!
is "getting away with it" by electronic the best end-of-the-night song ever?
New Order - Technique
Taking Sides: Pet Shop Boys vs. New Order

It's one of the greatest songs ever written.

Yes. And for all the grief that Barney takes for his lyrics, I find the first line of "Some Distant Memory" -- "I don't know, if we could get lost in a city this size if we wanted to" -- just amazingly good.

Borders on it, I suppose. Great video.

Thirded. I was obsessed by that oboe part, and what it seemed to say about life, as a wistful 16-year old...

I'm still obsessed with it.

Tennant's vocals on Get The Message makes me wish he was on most of the album.

Sumner's vocal performance on this is only beaten by "Regret", a real wistful slouching-in-your-chair type feeling, swirling the cubes in your glass thing.

You mean Tennant's vocal on "Getting Away With It. "

I'm really not getting the overall love in this thread.

1. The four descending notes are on each syllable in the first iteration of the phrase "living in sin".

2. There's no embelleshment going on; it's just a straight melody line with no frills or fanfare.

non-classic? not in my world. one of the very first songs i ever wrote - and boy, that's a long fucking time ago - was a blatant copy. it kind of defined everything a song should be.

for the next six years, i kept trying to get it right. eventually i gave up trying to write songs.

incredible, awesome, teenage-life-defining song. incredible, awesome, entire-life-defining album. "technique" has the edge, but only slightly.

no love for "gangster"? perhaps it was moving to glasgow that made it work for me, but suddenly it made sense. a truly incredible song, and barney's single greatest lyric.

It's not the way that you would listen
Or the way you comb your hair
It's the fact that you are missing
How I feel when you're not there
I went through all the months of January
Locked up in this cell
I'd like to be at home, but on my own
I didn't do too well

Look at me, I always get the blame
But I can't even learn to spell my name
I like to read, I like to write
But where I live I learn to fight
So don't you ever say that we're the same

I don't need a doctor telling me I'm full of juice
It's not a statement that I'm making, but the plain and simple truth
I went through all the months of January
Locked up in my cell
I'd like to think of home, when I'm alone
It doesn't work too well

Get The Message was one of my learning-to-play-the-piano songs. It'll always mean a lot to me.

This line, here...this does a pretty good job of encapsulating all that is great about barney's lyrics. It's STUPID and PERFECT at the same time, and I couldn't even begin to explain why.

New Order are officially my favourite band too, but I don't know why folks feel the need to call Electronic albums New Order albums. I think this ignores the considerable talent and contributions of Johnny Marr.

"Raise The Pressure" for me is far more classic and less dated than than this first Electronic album. How anyone could argue the sounds on the first one are less dated I can't imagine. The third was shite.

I'd hoped my tone was obvious. No one defends this song as a lost classic, so I thought I should; it's probably my second favorite song, as my love upthread showed.

Well, so I just heard "Some Distant Memory" a couple of hours ago, after a desolate walk, with humidity gripping my face like a vise. Ugh.

"Gangster" is fucking awesome. Really, the only song on this album that isn't fucking awesome is "Idiot Country".

My vote for least awesome is "Try All You Want."

the first electronic album is my FAVOURITE NEW ORDER ALBUM
i heard it before i heard any new order album. and you are right. it is the best of all new order, electronic and other collab albums of new order members (except joy div). i love how easy going it is. and how it really holds perfectly together with hardly any crap song. most new order albums suffer from inconsistency imo. usually one, two or three phantastic pop songs and lots of second rate stuff.

"Idiot Country" is GREAT.

i am a little surprised that no one has mentioned the album closer, feel every beat yet. that shaky keyboard motif which slows down and reverberates like hell in the last minute is my favourite moment on the album. transcendental dance music. i also very much like the only instrumental, the melancholic soviet (a swan song on the ussr without lyrics) which is a perfect interlude between gangster and get the message.

Rappin' Barney!...love it, especially how he subtly references "Rappers Delight"...

They were very good with instrumentals! There's one called "Lean to the Inside" on the "Feel Every Beat" CD single (on which you'll find several mixes superior to the album's), a Trever Horn-ish stab at orchestral synth-pop, that was for a while used in lots of morning shows.

None, it's got some good moments but there's something that doesn't quite work for me. Maybe the beat. "Disappointed" though is not only Electronic's best song. It's one of my favorite songs of the 90's.

REVIVE

I ought to pull these albums out tomorrow. It's been a while.

"Raise The Pressure" for me is far more classic and less dated than than this first Electronic album. How anyone could argue the sounds on the first one are less dated I can't imagine. The third was shite

The third one had a nice cover of Can't Find My Way Home though.

i don't really care if something sounds "dated". period charm, innit.

"Gangster" is fucking awesome. Really, the only song on this album that isn't fucking awesome is "Idiot Country"

I love this album, but yeah "Get The Message" is classic. The video got a lot of play on 120 Minutes at the time, and maybe even on MTV otherwise? I love how the drums sound when they come in, that pop. This is also the song that first introduced me to New Order.

I like "Raise the Pressure"- Forbidden City is a great song, one of the best singles of the 90s IMO.

i don't recall much about that album other than that song -- which i adored; the barney prozac documentary; and destroying my vinyl copy by dropping it down the back of a cupboard and scratching it to fuck.

missed that documentary, it sounded funny though!

The other good single off that album is this one:

I'll always remember hearing this song playing in the cab just after I'd got off the plane that landed me in Manchester in 1991. It's extraordinary, yes. Marr's guitar sound = priceless. And yes, fucking "Gangster" is probably my fave song on that album.

Whoops! I already kinda said that upthread. Haha.

news flash: "Get the Message" is still awesome

I haven't posted on this thread yet? What the hell, me.

I could be one in a million
It would be so good to start again

I listened to this album in the gardens of the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild on the Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat in the south of France earlier this month, & it was perfect.

I was going to say "Well aren't YOU fancy" but objectively speaking you clearly are, given that.

I was bragging, to be fair, but this album's worth it.

my appreciation for this album has skyrocketed over time; I think I was slightly disappointed when it came out that it didn't seem to have as much Johnny Marr on it as I was expecting. But I probably listen to this more than any new order album bar Power and Movement these days.

I don't know
If we could get lost in a city this size
If we wanted to

The little synth counter melody on the chorus is absolutely devastating. And the completely unexpected flamenco guitar that comes in and does a little weep for you. And it goes grandiose and Low Life era New Order at the end and it's just... aaaaahhhhh...

(SDM not GTM obv though the second side of this album is just one giant classic after another, man there are such sweet memories attached to this album)

^^^ yes. Also:

My favorite non-classic is "Some Distant Memory," whose production and arrangement (a live oboe solo doubling a synth!) evoke the wistfulness of the title and lyrics.
― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Monday, July 11, 2005 5:29 PM

I was wrong. It's a classic.

I haven't listened to this album in SOOO long (I had it on cassette, it didn't survive too many repeated playings) and it is making me smile so much.

It's so perfect in so many little touches. Yes, there are some cringingly embarrassing moments (LOL @ the Barney rap) but it's moved from dated-badly to so-of-its-time-it-perfectly-catches-that-time-and-place. Like, I'm willing to forgive any clumsy Barneyrhymed raps for the deliciously baggy chords at the end of Feel Every Beat.

Aaaaahhh, 1991, I miss you, drinking underage in a gay bar on Lark St, slow dancing with a sock stuffed down my trousers. Those were the days. (no they weren't, they were shit to be honest, but this is still a great album)

Let me put it this way: this album is better than anyone's 1991.

Yes.

god this album

"Feel Every Beat", yes! Perfect 1991 compilation opener.

It's better to live than to know.

Every song on here (except "Idiot Country") was my favorite song at one point in time. "Tighten Up", "Gangster" and "Get the Message" still float to the top of that pile frequently.

i can still recall holding down the rewind button on the cassette player and playing Tighten Up over and over again when I got the album. kind of hate the opening synth hits now but it's still a massive tune. Bad Lt. played it live every night on their last tour.

Some archival interviews here: http://www.feeleverybeat.co.uk/articles/

Given how, er, truculent the UK press can be, the first album was widely loved, I sese.

Good track by track breakdown

That is good. Its point about "Reality" is right: it has a great chorus but it's as close to a weak track as the album gets. It's still a righteous tune, don't get me wrong!

All those keyboard sounds in the last 1:30 are the history of acid house in miniature though!

Yeah; mostly I don't like the opening. It doesn't bridge well with the previous song. I'd put it maybe third from the end instead.

Damn you ILX for making me dig this album out every time this thread gets bumped.

Listening to the album Lusine brought out earlier this year, The Waiting Room (which I'm enjoying a lot, it has to be said), and there's a cover of 'Get The Message' on there (which isn't actually too bad!)