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Brotherhood builds on Low-Life and adds acoustic guitar to their electronic palete to great effect.It also bosts their synth sound at it's best, the classic New Order sound never got any better than this!
Paradise is a good intro with drums ala Love Vigilantes, Weirdo swaggers along on Peter Hook's booming bass with a great solo too. As It Is When It Was is a classic, with low key acoustic guitars mingling to emotive effect with bass. The lyrics about a broken relationship probably mirror Barney's marriage problems, he blamed them squarely on a Smash Hit's article that strongly implied he was 'enjoying' himself on a US tour, his bitterness towards the press still comes out in songs written 20 years later.
Broken Promise continues the theme of betyral, it has probably Barney's best guitar solo. Way Of Life mixes rock and synths like Paradise and is notable for mimicking Love Will Tear Us Apart in it's closing chords.
Bizarre Love Triangle (the title comming from a News Of The World article)with it's heartfelt lyrics again about betyral has the finest mix of synths and bass guitar New Order ever managed, the bass solo comming in at the 'wrong' moment to incredible effect.
All Day Long tackles child abuse with simple words while the orchestrial synths are achingly beautiful and melancholic. Angel Dust antcipates the 'druggy' ambience of Technique while Every Little Counts is a humerous pastiche of Lou Reed's Walk On The Wild Side that ends with the sound of a needle scratching the grooves(I still recall with a grin my Dad rushing in thinking I'd ruined his record player the first time I played it!).
In the 1980's I considered Brotherhood New Order's finest moment, looking back now I would place it just below Low-Life and on a par with Technique. But WHY didn't they include the brilliant single State Of The Nation?
1986 was a tough year for New Order. The Hacienda, their beloved nightclub interest in Manchester, was losing money hand over fist. They were obliged to keep gigging and releasing records in order to keep both Factory Records and the club afloat.
The musical climate was changing too: the synth revolution had began to lose momentum as the guitar backlash gathered steam, the Order's Mancunian contemporaries The Smiths sweeping all before them both commercially and critically.
Brotherhood's predecessor Low Life took a lot of beating and Brotherhood struggled slightly in its shadow but tracks like Paradise, with Barney's insistent chorus vocal, and the stunning Bizarre Love Triangle go a long way to ensure it's not seen as an also-ran album. Indeed, BLT is the only track they regularly do live from this album, although there are several other contenders.
The album is divided sharply between 'electronic' songs and 'acoustic' songs (their definitions at the time), As It Is When It Was being the highlight of the latter, with its minimal opening setting up for some fierce vocal menace later: "The streets are so empty at this time of night/I'd rather walk on my own by right..." sings Barney and you understand he's not a man to be trifled with.
Side two, the "electronic" side, features All Day Long, a song that dares to comment on child abuse and Angel Dust, a song about drug use (AD being a name for PCP), the two songs not being up to par writing-wise. As fas as I know they've never been played live.
Wrapping things up on the final track is Every Second Counts. With its slight resemblance to Lou Reed's classic NYC sleaze-fest Walk On The Wild Side (NO claim they had no idea it sounded similar although no-one believed them at the time, they being Reed/Velvets fans through and through!), the song builds and builds, Sumner cracking up at just how poor the lyric was he'd written for it, resulting in him giggling and muttering a few lines off-mike.
The construction of the song is impeccable, with Gillian Gilbert's sequencing superb throughout. The curtain comes down on the album as the notes merge into a giant drone, a huge wall of noise which is then curtailed by the sound of someone becoming irritated by the vast cacophany, violently removing the needle from the groove (good old days of vinyl!), quickly followed by a short burst of an ancient song...and that's your lot!
Between the career highs of Low Life and Technique, Brotherhood stands up as an underated album but is a solid document in any case.
Ps the cover design is from a flightcase panel.
Brotherhood came out in 1986, following the release of the patchy Shellshock & State of the Nation singles (& the second Peel Sessions ep). Read more
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