http://www.accessatlanta...turns-atlanta-after-two/By Melissa Ruggieri
In the 24 years since New Order last played Atlanta – at Six Flags Over Georgia, believe it or not – their style of electronic dance-rock has shifted from cool British New Wave movement to universally popular genre.
While the group that emerged from the ashes of Joy Division paid homage to artists such as Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder, New Order has since influenced acts from The Pet Shop Boys to The Killers to Calvin Harris.
Throughout their two-hour show Sunday night at a rain-soaked Chastain Park Amphitheatre, you could hear many techniques – the twin synthesizers, the choppy drum sequences, the live drumming meshed with dueling guitars – prevalent not only in current club hits, but standard Top 40 fodder as well.
Considering the studio wizardry that accompanies their songs, the band – original members Bernard Sumner (vocals, guitar), Stephen Morris (drums) and Gilligan Gilbert (synthesizers), plus 12-year vet Phil Cunningham (guitar, synthesizers) and Tom Chapman (bassist since 2011, when the band said goodbye to Peter Hook) – expertly replicated the layered sounds of their musical inventory.
Though the bass and bass drum were a bit heavy in the mix for the first few songs, including their most melodic creation, “Regret,” the crowd of a few thousand couldn’t care less and remained happily in motion. (This was a non-table setup show and the pit was cleared to serve as a dance floor…the rain also stopped moments before New Order took the stage.)
Sumner often sounded muddled whether he was singing or talking, and it’s no revelation that he’s never possessed the most expressive voice. But vocals are hardly the reason anyone listens to New Order or bands of their electronic ilk. It’s all about the beat, man, and if that was what you came to hear, you had to feel satisfied.
New Order commendably dressed up their show with a plethora of cool multimedia that included frenetic club lighting and a video screen that showed random images of pill bottles, surfers and shapeless blobs of color (the Joy Division encore also included some quick black and white images of Ian Curtis).
And since the band was usually busy unfurling pieces of songs – Morris stayed particularly engaged during “Ceremony” – the only other visual fun came from watching Sumner and Cunningham pump their right arms in unison against their guitar strings during “Crystal” and seeing Sumner unhook from his guitar to walk the stage a bit for “World.”
Sunday’s show was only the second of an eight-date tour, but since New Order has been on the road sporadically since last fall, their presentation by this point is technically flawless.
There isn’t a lot of warmth to their songs, but there is still something stirring about the stuttering synth notes of “Bizarre Love Triangle,” the funky bass groove of “5 8 6” and the electrifying lights that pulsed through “True Faith.” Even “Blue Monday,” powered by drum machines and an intentionally flat vocal, latched onto your brain after hearing it live.
While New Order presented fans with an abundance of favorites, the band also didn’t neglect its roots. They first unveiled Joy Division’s “Isolation” – which was filled with lights criss-crossing the stage like lasers – during the main set and then leaned heavily on that catalog for an encore that included the slow-burning “Atmosphere.”
It might have been more than two decades since New Order last performed in Atlanta, but on Sunday the band demonstrated just how relevant their synth-glazed songs have remained.
