CityLife

New Order @ M.E.N Arena

WE hope you enjoy it, mused Bernard Sumner as New Order, the city's most enduring musical export and probably its most influential, took the stage for their first home-town gig for nearly three years.

It would have been impossible for anyone in the sell-out house not to have enjoyed it.

They haven't changed much - New Order were always the rock band dance fans liked and the dance act rock fans could get into - but at the same time, they have, which explains why the audience comprised as many 40-somethings who remember them first time round as it did 20-somethings.

With former Marion man Phil Cunningham standing in for Gillian Gilbert on keyboards and guitar, that was also the case on stage.

The new album Get Ready is a bit mixed, but it does include a few gems. One such is Crystal, which kicked off the show. Its thumping bass-line allowed the leonine Peter Hook, whose bass is so low-slung these days it scrapes the floor, to show off his idiosyncratic playing style.

Whereas most bands treat gigs as a chance to showcase the new stuff, New Order, as they get older, are exhuming more and more of the Joy Division back catalogue, with a suitably sombre Transmission being the pick.

But what everyone wanted to hear were the New Order classics. Bizarre Love Triangle received a curious acid house treatment which didn't quite come off, while Touched by the Hand of God was touched instead by a dollop of funk which sounded little more than work-in-progress.

The highlight was unquestionably a majestic True Faith, with Temptation a close second. They could only finish the gig with one track, and a triumphant Blue Monday - for which Gillian appeared - duly concluded the show.