Republic revisited:

Having listened to Republic lately, for me personally, I like Young Offender and Times Change a lot.

regret world

It does surprise me that Republic is not one of fan's favourite.

I just love that album, every single track. And it's one of my fave NO albums along with WFTSC.

It may not be one of New Order's "best", per se, but along with Technique & WFTSC, it's one of the few albums I am able to listen to throughout.

On Movement, I only listen to DNE, Truth, Chosen Time, and Denial. On PCL, I pretty much only listen to AOC, The Village, YSF and 586. On Low Life, I listen to LV, This Time of Night, maybe Sunrise and Face Up. On Brotherhood, only the B side + Paradise. On Get Ready, I listen to Vicious Streak, Primitive Notion and Someone Like You.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE New Order, and always will, but my biggest complaint is they don't have the LP output that other bands have...The Cure and DM have "Seventeen Seconds", "Faith", "Pornography", "Disintegration", "Black Celebration", "Violator" & "Songs of Faith and Devotion"....all these albums I am able to listen to without skipping any track. All these albums have a central theme, or at least they flow together in a cohesive manner. They are fully formed albums, whereas New Order (1980-1986) seems to (more often than not) half-heartedly record tracks they perform very well in a live setting. New Order (1989-Today), write, record & finally perform the songs, which lends itself to being more professional sounding, but all their albums have snoozers no matter what they do. Every "Vanishing Point" yields a "Guilty Partner", every "Special" yields a "Liar", etc. Very hit and miss is what I'm trying to say.

When I want a great singles collection, I pop in "Substance". When I want a great album experience, I'm afraid more often than not I go somewhere else.

republic ,dissapointed me with the lack of hookys bass,, waiting till track 7 for a teaser was a bit much.. individualy some of the songs are faves,,ruined in a day especialy. there was lots of hagling over were to record and who with ( preproduction credits on regret !!) the band couldt even remember how many tracks were on the album "13" ! no thats how many concerts your doing (g.g.) i remember taking the day off work for the radio 1 new order day(sic). could i get through to there phone line competition with 2 phones no i couldt ,,the prize ,,appear in a video. course there was also the drugs .

the "atmospher " was well summed up by there reading apearance ,, i realy thought that was the end when they walked of stage,, it just summed up the whole rumour mill from the last few years.

it was like water down the drain.

I've had a listen to Republic recently and looking at this thread I've drawn some conclusions. Trying not to repeat what everyone else has written Republic overall isn't a 'bad' album but it was made in very turbulent circumstances - most notably the fall out surrounding Factory's collapse and the resulting tension which may or may not have be evident in what became the end product. Moreover Republic's 'commercial' sounding production - IMO even more pop orientated than WFTSC, and Hooky's minimal involvement probably didn't endear it to JD/NO die hards and Spooky (the album mix not Fluke's remix which was f***ing excellent), Liar and Times Change have dated badly sounding almost like Electronic/Other Two outtakes. That said there are some gems on there. Regret is arguably one of NO's finest hours a perfect example of what they can come up with when everyone is firing on all cylinders. I'm also quite partial to Ruined In A Day, Special, Chemical, World - Price Of Love, Young Offender, Everyone Everywhere and Avalanche which although they're not necessarily classic's were reasonable efforts, contain most of the elements I like about NO and as some of you have said NO albums always mix their good, bad and ugly LOL! Overall a reasonable if sometimes patchy effort which was slightly tipped their Dance/Rock ideas more towards Dance music. Yes there was better Dance music - Hardfloor, Autchere, Fluke, LFO, FSOL, Massive Attack, Leftfield, Underworld, Orbital, Chems, Lionrock etc. being made at the time than what is represented here but in hindsight we can over analyse what could/could not have been an improvement - production, songs, technology and the atmosphere LOL upon Republic 14 or so years after the event. Cheers!

oldmonkey wrote: Well it's only New Order by name, isn't it? Hooky's not even on half the album, wasn't even in the studio when it was recorded apparently! It's two albums in one, the New Order tracks and the filler, Electronic leftovers tacked on so that they could meet their commitment to Warners. Regret, Everyone Everywhere, Ruined, Special and the Price of Love were the ones that featured all/most of the band.

They weren't a happy bunch around this time, and it shows. Bernard's bitterness towards Tony Wilson was never more blatant, there was infighting over the demise of Factory, and it was all a bit poo, with only Regret as the shining light that cut through all the acrimony.

The tracks above are deffo the best on the whole album but as OldMonkey says it's quite miraculous that even they managed to see the light of day given all the crap being flung from all quarters at that time. Best of the rest was Spooky(which had some other remixes done by Fluke, Tony Garcia and Paul Van Dyk which are far superior to the album mix)and Avalanche which highlights what could have been if Gillian had done lead vox on some of NO's stuff instead of Bernard.

Republic was one of the very first NO records I ever got. Mind you, I became a fan in 1995, and was very young, but had mainly bought it because of Regret at the time... and was still fairly new to everything NO. Didn't really like a lot of the songs, except of course Spooky, and Everyone Everywhere, and World.. but its quickly becoming one of my most top favorites now, after a long time not really listening much to the entire album. The muic is just beautiful, and a very different side to New Order.. a more emotionally mature approach, which is really cool, and I think it contains some of Barney's best lyrics and vocals. Very very different. Very soothing album in my opinion, too. New Order seem to have an album/song for every mood.

I dunno. I think the album's pretty underrated.

Ben wrote:

NObabe wrote: Regret+Ruined in a day+Everyone everywhere

not bothered with the rest of it :nope:

What about Special?

I think it's probably among their greatest songs ever, to be honest.

Didn't even really like it when I first heard it, and then suddenly later on, kaabam, then it hit me. I was like "why the hell'd I not like this before?" But hey, it happens, lol.