Mojo - The Music Magazine

The resurgent, sans-Peter Hook New Order - the cover stars of this month's MOJO - are no strangers to splitting and reconfiguring. Shall we salute their various hiatuses and solo projects with predicament-suitable lyrical examples?

1. New Order - Fine Time TOTP

Though they'd be scattered to the four winds by the end of the following year (questionable football records aside) in November '88 New Order pumped up the acid and landed this rave-pop lawn dart on the very nucleus of the zeitgeist. It possibly concerned Haçienda party people too busy having a good time to bother with mere dental hygiene.

Telling lyric: "You know I've met a lot of cool chicks / But I've never met a girl with all her own teeth."

2. Revenge - Pineapple Face

From November '89, bassist Peter Hook made a break for solo success with a somewhat cowed-looking new band with a mean leather dress code. Hooky insisted that the band wasn't him, like, taking revenge on New Order, but watching the video for Pineapple Face - a queasy, porny riot of fetish gear, unfortunate camera angles and blank-look sapphic intrigues with Hooky as bare chested, motorbike-riding lead baboon - and the idea that this is an epic act of reprisal upon the entire world is inescapable.

Telling lyric: "Now you're gone how can I even try to go on? / I know I must be strong."

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3. Electronic - Getting Away With It

One month later Bernard Sumner revealed his new collaboration with ex-Smiths guitar potentate Johnny Marr, and reached number 12 with this ever-wondrous synth-orchestral meditation on the improvised life featuring backing vocals by Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant. The feeling of relief and released pressure is palpable.

Telling lyric: "I've been forcing myself / Not to forget just to feel worse"

4. New Order - Regret

A big comeback after nearly four years of side projects and the collapse of Factory Records, May '93's Regret came with this splendid Baywatch-based Top Of The Pops appearance. But the apparent harmony wasn't to last, and the group would sunder again that August after playing a final show at the Reading Festival.

Telling lyrics: "Just wait till tomorrow / I guess that's what they all say / Just before they fall apart"

5. The Other Two - Selfish

In November 1993, Steven Morris and Gillian Gilbert were out on their own with this Number 46 almost-hit. It's the kind of melodious splendour that makes possible new New Order records seem so tantalising, but was their mellifluousness a reflection on the tumult in the parent band?

Telling lyrics: "Sometimes it's true, forgiving you is hard to do / It's crystal clear, could end in tears."

6. Monaco - What Do You Want From Me?

Hooky was at it again, with ex-Revenge bandmate Pottsy and a newly bleached swede. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the bass figures prominently in this agreeable synthed-up pop-rocker which reached Number 11 in February 1997. But the shadow of New Order? Inescapable!

Telling lyrics: "Give me something I can rely on / Far away from the life that I once knew"

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7. Chemical Brothers feat. Bernard Sumner - Out Of Control

Following a comeback show at August '98's Reading Festival, New Order were again operational. But in October '99 Bernard was up for some rave-cavorting around the disco-mating sinkholes of the north and beyond with new pals Tom 'n' Ed Chemical. Could a lyrical reference to facial hair be a reference to his bumfluff 'tache back in the Warsaw days?

Telling lyrics: "Could be that I'm just losing my touch / Or maybe you think my moustache is too much."

8. New Order - Crystal

Surely one of the most definitive comeback statements in pop history, the first New Order single since Spooky in December 1993, Crystal hit Number 8 in August 2001. Amusingly, it was originally written by Sumner for the splendidly-named Hungarian DJ Corvin Dalek - but were the song's sentiments of betrayal and aging suited to a boshing dance interpretation?

Telling lyrics: "I'm applauded, then forgotten / It was summer, now it's autumn"

9. New Order - Here To Stay

Recorded as the somewhat grave outro music for the 24 Hour Party People movie - the legend of Joy Division, New Order, Tony Wilson and Factory records, among other things - is this the band's most underrated single? And was its sense of shared destiny a tacit admission that the members of New Order were more powerful together than apart?

Telling lyrics: "He'll drive you away, he'll drive you insane / But then he'll remove all of your pain."

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10. Bad Lieutenant - Sink Or Swim

Hooky having gone off and started playing Joy Division albums with his band The Light - like some unconscious crockery-wrecking exercise in the New Order trophy cabinet of the soul, perhaps? - Bernard carried on with New Order bandmates Morris and Phil Cunningham plus bassist Tom Chapman and guitar/voice Jake Evans. Their debut single tells some old fool not to destroy his domestic bliss by running around town with a younger woman.

Telling lyrics: "Doesn't know where he's coming from / Reaching perfection takes too long."

11. The Light feat. Perry Farrell - Isolation

Having departed New Order in late '06, Peter Hook engineered the abortive Freebass with Andy Rourke and Mani. Then in mid-2010 he started revisiting Joy Division. Here's a clip from a Los Angeles show last September, with Hooky's pal Perry Farrell taking the Ian Curtis role on a version of Isolation off Joy Division's 1980 LP Closer.

Telling lyrics: "I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through / I'm ashamed of the person I am."

12. New Order - 5 8 6

Live at Le Bataclan in Paris on October 18, the group play a re-arranged version of 5 8 6 off 1983's classic long-player Power, Corruption And Lies. Doesn't sound 27 years old does it?

Telling lyrics: "When it happens / You will be no friend of mine."

Compiled and annotated by Clive Prior