You can ask convincingly, why? Apropos of nothing, no album, no single, not even a new DVD, why are New Order on their longest and biggest UK tour in twenty years? Then ask yourself, why not?

Is it because they seem to have fallen in love with playing live again? It can’t be for the money – if it was, they’d be playing arenas in the US. Why then, this autumn jaunt around civic halls?

This new leaner, meaner New Order – stripped of the backing vocalists and the Joy Division karaoke indulgences, shine. With the march of time, two things happen : either you throw yourself into your work and leave your mark, or you step back, and fade. Tonight a revitalised, playful New Order burn. It’s better to burn out than fade away. For with each day you get closer to the end. And this could be last tour, their last farewell.

And, if they followed the established knowledge, they’d suck. Because everyone becomes fat and haggard and crap when they’re old. Everyone it seems, except New Order. The songs themselves, new and old, spanning the past thirty years, are innocent like children, playful like puppies, timeless like all great art. If there are still people in a hundred years time, they’ll still be listening to these songs. Because some things never change : the heart feels the same. Love, hate, regret. The language of the art transcends the dialect.

Next to me, just before they start a sparkling rendition of Joy Division’s “Transmission”, the twenty year old kid yells “LEGENDS!” at the stage. Strange it is to think of these boys trapped in men’s bodies as legends. They are, after all, just New Order. But better than they were in 1985, according to someone who saw them then.

Unlike previous shows, New Order are no mere nostalgia – no cheap cash-in reformation, for the newer material sounds as good as the old (a third of tonight’s set is from the latest album) : songs such as “Krafty”, “Turn”, and an unexpected “Guilt Is A Useless Emotion” soar as high as anything from the days when music came on vinyl and was 12” inches wide. Gone are the recent memories, where the band would trade solely on past glories, and play six Joy Division songs in an act of sheer ignorant perversity, pandering, so it seemed, to the legend of history whilst ignoring the present. No longer do New Order feel nostalgic, they feel new.

They tap into that pecularily British malaise – hopeful, yet hopeless at the same time. Songs like “Crystal”, and “Regret” are both timeless classics, yet also rooted to a particular time that New Order see as their essence : the ruminations of history, and the hope of the future.

It’s during the final strait of the set, the uberwhammy of “Bizarre Love Triangle”, “Temptation”, a sublime, fabulous quarter hour medley of “Perfect Kiss/Blue Monday”, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and “True Faith”, that it instantly dawns. These are some of the best songs ever written. The absurdity of it, that something as small as a song that can make life seem worth living. A sweaty bouncing mass of thirty-something Dads, chanting an atonal sequence line and yelling “ONETWOTHREEFOUR!” like Suburban Disco Ramones as frogs gribbit over BPM’s. Absurd. Amazing.

Honstly, they have never sounded better. These are the days we will look back to in years to be come, and be glad that we were here and now.

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