True Faith, New Order

July 16, 2007

This is the 12' single of New Order's "True Faith". For me it was an album to set on the turntable in my room. It sat there and spun at 33 1/3 rpm.. just like my Bauhaus and Smiths records. I reclined on my bed and listened. I never danced to New Order.. and that has left me with the sneaking suspicion that I did not have the genuine New Order experience.

Many of the songs that I have written about in this series of interpretations are easy enough to place in terms of context. They were meant to be listened to in my leisure. They stand or fall through the ability of their melodies and lyrics to grab me in that empty space. New Order demands a second level of interpretation.. a contextual level. We will appreciate those songs best when we listen to them not as singer-songwriter also-rans, but as products expertly sculpted to fit into a particular setting.

It is refreshing to listen to New Order because much of the artistic heaviness of singer-songwriters drops away. There is no sense that the music could change the world.. or save your soul. That heaviness of purpose has been delegated to the physical experience of dancing and club culture in general. Music becomes a playful accompaniment to that primary experience.

For a sense of the club atmosphere in which New Order thrived, check out their video for "Confusion".. which is set in New York City, but still gives a sense of the home turf of New Order.

New Order was a major supporter of a nightclub known as the Haçienda in Manchester, UK. It was a legendary venue that flourished in the late 80s and early 90s. Former DJ Dave Haslam describes the scene:

By the end of 1987 the famous Hacienda queues were there from Wednesday through to Saturday, each night having its own identity. At 9pm the queue would be round the building. Ironically considering what as to happen in the club within a year or so, it was a friendly crowd...

A conclusive change came in 1988. Ecstasy use changed clubs forever; a night at the Hacienda went from being a great night out, to an intense, life changing experience. The new sounds of house and techno seemed to survive the club’s poor acoustics; cluttered music sounded a mess bouncing off the walls of the club, but thudding beats, piano lines, and minimalist bleeps rocked the room. The music sounded even better on drugs.

In 1987 my "True Faith" single came out. People were then lining up to get into the Haçienda. I was in junior high and living in Redlands, California. New Order found its niche in nightclub settings, but for me it was an album to be listened to very carefully.. like all my records. Perhaps the analogy here should be to some woodworker who, commissioned to make some pragmatic object, discovers a way to infuse creative interest into his craft. That creative lining is what I attached myself to when I was young.. and what I will talk about now in this interpretation.

"True Faith" begins with a few shimmering lines of optimism that I have always found hard to shake:

I feel so extraordinary
Something's got a hold on me
I get this feeling I'm in motion
A sudden sense of liberty

You can well imagine that those lines have a primary reference to the experience of the nightclub. The high of movement and motion and liberty is embodied in an exhilarating beat. The progression of the song will steadily darken this opening.. but the hook for the song is right here: the shining vision of movement and liberty.

The next lines keep us on the dance floor, but now we are made a little more conscious of the real world that is being left behind in the embrace of this alternative world:

I don't care cause I'm not there
And I don't care if I'm here tomorrow
Again and again I've taken too much
Of the things that cost you too much

In the references to something "taken too much" and things that "cost you too much" a hazy image of recreational drugs begins to develop. "Again and again" makes it sounds like there is something compulsive going on.

The chorus is all about the morning sun. The morning sun is itself something that would have resonance for clubbers at the Haçienda (who would be immortalized in the film 24 Hour Party People). Nightclubs by definition keep people moving until late late in the night. In such a setting the morning sun would not be something one wakes up to see, but something one reaches after hours of dancing and clubbing.

I used to think that the day would never come
I'd see delight in the shade of the morning sun
My morning sun is the drug that brings me near
To the childhood I lost, replaced by fear
I used to think that the day would never come
That my life would depend on the morning sun

The key line is that third one: "My morning sun is the drug that brings me near...". Of course literally the drugs are introduced solely as a metaphor. The morning sun IS LIKE a drug. That construction seems to be a deliberate misdirection, since what New Order is talking about is manifestly drugs. It makes much more sense to say: "The drug is like the morning sun that reminds me of the childhood I lost". But that natural progression is reversed and we are left with elusive verses that try to make us think they are about nature.

The third verse is a repeat of the first one, so the only other lines we have to consider are those in the second verse:

When I was a very small boy,
Very small boys talked to me
Now that we've grown up together
They're afraid of what they see
That's the price that we all pay
Our valued destiny comes to nothing
I can't tell you where were going
I guess there was just no way of knowing

We have already encountered in the chorus a lament for lost childhood, and now that lament is broadened. Once we could be close to people, but now we are frightened and separated. This combination of drugs and lament for lost childhood is also present in Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb".. which I suspect to be behind the progression of thoughts in "True Faith":

When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

Again, something was right in childhood and now its gone. That sense of loss is also positioned as a reason to take drugs. What is different about New Order's version is that we should not see a lone man shooting up heroin (as we see in The Wall). We should instead try to imagine a hectic and euphoric dance floor where people as a group work out there fears, get back to childhood, and look for the exhaustion of the morning sun.