#362 The Best Album of 1989, Round 3 Match #104: New Order vs. Lou Reed
Hey folks!
Today’s Best Album of 1989 match is:
#12 New Order, TECHNIQUE
vs.
#21 Lou Reed, NEW YORK
To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.
We have two Designated Cheerleaders today! First up, it’s @kevinalexander.bsky.social with a DC for TECHNIQUE! Take it away, Kevin!
There’s not much point in burying the lede here; this lookback won’t come close to being objective. If you’ve been with us for more than a few weeks, you know my love for this band and are keenly aware that On Repeat Records could devolve into a New Order fan page at any moment.
That said, this record is a massive achievement for the band at a time when not much else was going right for them-certainly not internally, anyway. To put something out amidst so much strife and financial pressure alone would be worth noting. That it is some of the best work they’ve ever produced makes it all the more remarkable.
Most people will remember March 24th, 1989, as the date the Exxon Valdez ran aground. I remember walking to the closest shopping mall to get tickets to see New Order.
That was the closest Ticketmaster outlet, and I was probably halfway down the street before my mom had even finished giving me permission. With the benefit of hindsight — and now being a parent myself — I now know what a huge leap of faith this must’ve been for her. We lived in the suburbs, and she was giving the green light to an (almost) 14 yr. old to ride the bus across the metro area to see a band she heard nonstop but didn’t know.
I suppose on some level you just know when to let your kids leap.
The band was on the road supporting their 5th studio album, Technique, and it came out when I was in junior high. The record was one of the bright spots in an otherwise blah era for me.
If Low Life is a show at an intimate venue, Technique is a sweaty rave filled with strobe lights and ecstasy. Indeed, the record was partly recorded in Ibiza with the band off their rockers. Technique is firmly rooted in the sounds surrounding them in their new environs. They choose the sunny locale at Hook’s insistence after a run of recordings made in “dark and horrible” London studios. The band decamped for Ibiza, hoping the change in scenery (and menu of drugs) would have the same positive effect that New York had had for them years earlier.
It worked…sort of…
After four months, the band only had ‘Fine Time’ and a couple of other tracks recorded to show for their time on the island. Declaring their holiday over, their label called them back to the UK, where they finished the record at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios.
We had expected to hear a lot of acid house music when we got to Ibiza because that had taken off in Manchester two to three months before we left, but we didn’t – we were hearing something called Balearic Beat,” Bernard said. We were actually disappointed at first because we were really into acid house, and what we heard, this Balearic Beat, was this crazy mash-up of styles and really commercial-sounding but there was also some really good stuff. By the end of our time there we were really influenced by it.
Their time in the sun may seem unproductive on the surface, but it had left an indelible mark on the group’s sound.
Fine Time is an
acid-houseBalearic Beat classic. Round and Round1 is pop perfection and saw decent airtime on MTV.Run is credited to not only New Order, but also (*checks notes) John Denver?!
Yes, really. Denver sued the band, alleging that the guitar riffs were lifted from his Leaving On a Jet Plane. The case was settled out of court, with his name subsequently added to the credits.
We could do a track-by-track breakdown, but the short version is this: Technique feels like the band's most honest record. Whether that’s down to the drugs or the Balearic sun, I don’t know. In the end, I suppose it doesn’t matter.
Perhaps more importantly, it is economical. Listening to it, every note has its place, and there is nothing extraneous. It's both a dance record and a pop record—in other words, a New Order record—but listening to it, there is a discipline that sets it apart from the band’s previous work.
The songs themselves are compact; the sequencers nailed down— there is no 9-minute version of anything on this LP. By this point, the band had also mastered the art of shifting between pop and dance tracks.
On Brotherhood, a distinct boundary exists between the two (literally- the styles each have their own side on the album). There are no guardrails here; the band makes segueing between styles look easy.
All of that is well and good, but why is it my number 1?
Technique was really the first record by the band that I found on my own. Yes, I knew them. Yes, I’d heard almost everything they had recorded up to that point. But this was different; I’d learned of its release on my own and gone and bought it with my own money.
No hand-me-downs from friends' older siblings or songs clipped from mix tapes. You always remember your first…
Good records always take you somewhere special. Thirty-five years later, Technique still does that for me.
Thanks, Kevin! Next up, it’s Head Cheerleader @bsglaser.bsky.social with NEW YORK! Take it away, Brian!
Over a multi-decade career, Lou Reed wrote a lot of songs and tried out a lot of different styles. He experimented with new recording technologies and put together combinations of producers/bands that sometimes didn’t make a lot of sense. But throughout all of that, his best stuff generally falls within a narrow sonic range. Like he says in the liner notes for NEW YORK: “You can’t beat 2 guitars, bass, drums.”
In the time between 1989 and now, not all of the lyrics on NEW YORK have held up (and some have taken on new meaning), but the music is as solid as anything Lou ever put to tape. He’s joined by Mike Rathke on 2nd guitar (with each guitar separated into its own stereo channel), Rob Wasserman on an unusual 6-string electric upright bass, and Fred Maher on drums (except for the 2 tracks where Moe Tucker does her inimitable percussion thing).
(NOTE: A reissue of the record has a full album live set from the NEW YORK tour—it’s a great listen!)
The band doesn’t sound like the Velvet Underground, even when Tucker is drumming, but it definitely sits along the through line the VU sketched out. Lou has some solos that nod in the direction of unhinged noise while being controlled by decades of post-Velvets experience. NEW YORK sounds great, and while it’s silly to ask a listener to ignore the lyrics on a Lou Reed record, in 2025 it’s at least worthwhile to focus on the playing and the sound as much as the songwriting.
Which, when it clicks into place, is great. There are some all-time Lou tracks here, and the opening triad of Romeo Had Juliet, Halloween Parade, and Dirty Blvd. is as good a run as Lou has on any record. (On the other hand, the later run of Beginning of a Great Adventure, Busload of Faith, Sick of You, Hold On, and Good Evening Mr. Waldheim make the record sag a bit.)
But whether he’s hitting the target or missing the mark, Lou is very much in his comfort zone throughout NEW YORK, looking around his city and trying to take account of what’s changed (and what hasn’t) while leading his band through the cityscape that comforts and challenges and enrages and saddens and inspires and energizes him.
The record ends with Dime Store Mystery, which should get some extra attention. One of the NYC institutions that had recently changed was Andy Warhol, who’d died in 1987. Moe is drumming here, and it’s appropriately the most Velvety thing on the album. But it’s not nostalgic—Lou places himself in the present and works through his adult feelings about his former mentor and creative partner/antagonist. I think it’s worth looking at the lyrics that close out the song as the music modulates in a familiar VU way:
I was sitting drumming thinking thumping pondering the Mysteries of Life
Outside the city shrieking screaming whispering the Mysteries of Life
There's a funeral tomorrow at St. Patrick's the bells will ring for you
Ah, what must you have been thinking when you realized the time had come for you
I wish I hadn't thrown away my time on so much Human and so much less Divine
The end of the Last Temptation
The end of a Dime Store Mystery
It’s complex and messily human stuff—and it’s a preamble to his next project, the album-length Warhol memorial he’d record with John Cale, SONGS FOR DRELLA.
NEW YORK isn’t Lou’s best album, and it doesn’t eclipse his VU records. But it’s a very good record that’s occasionally great, and it’s built on rock & roll music you can’t beat.
Thank you, Brian!
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Yesterday, #5 Nine Inch Nails, PRETTY HATE MACHINE defeated #28 Yo La Tengo, PRESIDENT YO LA TENGO, 146-54.
Thanks for another great turnout yesterday!
Kent