86. New Order - State Of The Nation (Factory)

Number one for four weeks from 27th September 1986

I don’t often delve into other people’s blogs or forum posts while researching for this site, purely because I don’t want to be unduly influenced by other people’s takes on these records. For “State Of The Nation”, though, I found myself sufficiently perplexed to want to scout around. It sometimes feels as if it’s the serviceable New Order single nobody has a strong opinion on one way or the other, their equivalent of “Lady Madonna” or “Heart” (cue the inevitable complaints from Beatles or Pet Shop Boys fans).

I uncovered nothing much at all during my scouting mission, apart from a few forum posts asking “Why does everybody hate ‘State of the Nation’?” during which nobody replied with anything negative at all, only expressing the view that they quite liked it. No-one seemed particularly compelled to jump in and scream that it was a blight on New Order’s catalogue, which made sense to me (I wasn’t previously aware that it was supposed to be).

Then I went over to my Last.fm profile to see how often I’d played it, and was a little bit surprised to see that it was my tenth most listened to New Order track – amazing since I couldn’t actually remember the last time I’d bothered (if anyone cares, it’s marginally ahead of “True Faith”, “Perfect Kiss” and “Regret”, all singles I could have sworn I’ve spent more time with). Obviously the views of a few Internet randoms and my own listening habits are not a precise scientific study, but it does feel as if “State” – New Order’s seventh indie number one – has been strangely neglected, rarely (if ever) played by the group live since its year of release and allowed to drift into the background.

This is peculiar. Musically speaking, “State Of The Nation” is an enticing, though admittedly never quite exciting, mix of sweet and sour. The keyboard lines are filled with exotic pan flute noises while the guitars are distorted and scraping, sounding like a hailstorm falling on abandoned sheet metal. Rhythms twitch beneath all this, jitterbugging almost threateningly, and throughout the full six-and-a-half minutes on the twelve inch, they manage to stretch what seem like quite limited ideas out into interesting new shapes and destinations; say what you want about New Order but they were unbelievably bloody good at writing epic pop songs. Whereas most groups start to dawdle and repeat themselves after the third minute, they’re still bursting with fresh ideas in double that time.

The single seems to pick up the most criticism for its lyrics, and deservedly so. Sumner here feels as if he's delivering guide vocals camouflaged as social commentary; a dirty trick to play on the neurotic mid-eighties public. “My brother said that he was dead/ I saw his face and shook my head” he sings, almost disappointed rather than upset by the fact that his sibling was either literally or metaphorically deceased. “The state of the nation/ that’s holding our salvation” he informs us, before telling us it’s also “causing deprivation” (I always swear he sneaks “death inflation” in there somewhere as well, but that’s possibly just a long-standing misheard lyric of mine).

73. Easterhouse - Whistling In The Dark (Rough Trade)

One week at number one from 15th February 1986

Regardless of their claims otherwise, the “serious” music press have always been just as susceptible to hype as glossy teen magazines. Unlike Smash Hits and their metaphorical "dumper", however, they have often been more coy about their failings, crowing about their successes while hastily burying their dud predictions. The itinerary of NME hopefuls whose subsequent careers were either cruelly brief or never got off the ground is long; from Department S to Gay Dad to Terris to Brother (all of whom were cover stars) sometimes it's been hard not to wince at the risky long shots or desperate decisions.

As 1985 drew to a close, Easterhouse began to be sold as a solid proposition. Formed by brothers Ivor and Andy Perry in 1982, their credentials were impeccable – the group's association with The Smiths was strong, beginning with a Manchester support slot in 1983, and Morrissey and Marr had loudly proclaimed their brilliance to anyone willing to listen. The band also gave socialist diatribes to a music press happy to run over the word count for such things, and their first two Martin Hannett produced singles on London Records, while poor sellers, indicated a charged yet serious band.

Despite having all these credits on their side, London Records didn’t feel it was worth the effort investing further and dropped them, leaving them to be rescued by Rough Trade where, somewhat miraculously, the press enthusiasm continued unabated. One listen to “Whistling In The Dark” gives the game away as to why; this is an incredibly good and staggeringly robust record. It opens on a swinging Motown beat which subsequently dominates throughout, but that beat is augmented with hard, heavy guitar sounds – walloped metallic bass lines meet rhythm guitar lines which sound as if they’re echoing around a steelworks. “Let’s get to the point/ Get to the heart of it” bellows Andy Perry at the start, making it immediately clear that this was a band for whom toughness and directness were seen as virtues.

In a world where a band’s presence in the indie charts increasingly meant either deeply experimental music or delicate whimsy (or in the case of the Cocteau Twins, both) “Whistling” suggests that the powerful ideas birthed by punk rock weren’t necessarily exhausted. The music press were quick to suggest that Easterhouse may be Rough Trade’s Clash to The Smiths’ Pistols as a result, but in reality the bark and swing of the track feels as if it owes a bigger debt to The Jam; there’s the same strident, hectoring edge combined with a muscular but nonetheless irresistible delivery. 

Just when you think the track has shot its load and made its point, the final few moments turn out to be among the finest – “Don’t get caught the same way twice/ You give them money for old rage” yells Perry and the group completely let loose, thrashing, jangling and upping the dynamism past the point you thought it possible for them to go. It is, in short, a fine single and one I still play to this day.

Despite this, Easterhouse’s problem in the long term was multi-faceted. Firstly, a straightforward political punk revival clearly wasn't going to happen; even Paul Weller didn't want his records to sound like The Jam by this point. Besides that, the mid-eighties were a confused period in the music business, and nobody at either Rough Trade or any of the major labels seemed to effectively predict the way the wind was blowing. One of the common bets being placed by journalists and A&R reps was that if alternative music was going to crossover, it was going to have to adopt mainstream arena rock's production values and delivery. Throughout 1986 and slightly beyond, groups such as Goodbye Mr Mackenzie and Love And Money took the attitude and the sound of the alternative sector but turned their noise on vinyl into something airbrushed, vast and blown out. In the mid-eighties, any indie band getting signed to a major may have ended up sounding faintly like Big Country or Simple Minds in the end.