New Order honour the past, present and Paris at Brixton Academy

New Order Brixton review & setlist - Music Complete tour hits London

Photo: Wenn

"Vive Le France," spits New Order frontman Bernard Sumner as the band step on stage to the waving of the French flag on the screen behind them, the lights of the Tricolore beam over the capacity Brixton Academy crowd - with fists aloft and howling in solidarity. The Music Complete tour is in London, and here stand a band who are well versed in finding triumph through tragedy. This will be anything but a blue Monday.

I must admit, we did enter the venue tonight with our nerves a little on edge. The weekend's heinous attacks that saw 120 killed at an Eagles Of Death Metal show at The Bataclan in Paris do weigh heavily in the thoughts of all music fans.

However, live music is all about the communal celebration of the freedom of expression, and no one in Brixton tonight is willing to let terror prevail - especially the band on stage. From the death of Ian Curtis bringing an end to Joy Division, to the departure of the now thoroughly embittered bassist Peter Hook, if there's anything that history has taught us, it's that nothing will stop New Order.

They tear straight into opener 'Singularity' - one of the many peaks on new album Music Complete. It perfectly sets the tone for the evening, with a Joy Division sense of menace and packed with that classic New Order infectious elegiac charm, it more than pays its dues to the past. However, there's a compulsion to its energy, and a life that charges ever onwards. This is the sound very much of now. It is immediately made clear that New Order still matter.

Pardon the hyperbole, but 'Ceremony', 'Age Of Consent' and '5 8 6' are simply three of the finest indie songs of the last 40 years. To play them in immediate succession at the top of the set is frankly, taking the piss - and you can see it in the teary-eyes of the hundreds of thirty and fourty-somethings who raise their arms and beat their chests in disbelief. And while Brandon Flowers may be playing across town, there are fans of all ages here tonight, new believers as well as veterans. There's something about New Order that finds relevance in all generations. There's that old David Bowie phrase that 'tomorrow belongs to those who hear it coming', and New Order have always sounded like the future.

Music Complete's 'Restless', 'Plastic' along with 'Tutti Frutti' and 'Peope On The High Line' guested by La Roux's Elly Jackson are far from just an echoing of past glories - they add real substance for the present day. Most artists of their age can only dream of being able to inspire this much love by rolling off classics with the calibre of 'Bizarre Love Triangle', 'The Perfect Kiss' and the pristine, heartache and perfection of 'Temptation', but to compete with their own legacy with such aplomb puts them in a league of their own.

"We'd like to dedicate this part of our set, in fact the whole of our set, to the victims of the apalling, senseless violence," says Sumner, returning for an encore of the sombre but touchingly fitting outing of Joy Division's 'Atmosphere' before sealing with the perfect kiss of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' honouring Ian Curtis before a triumphant full stop of 'Blue Monday. Every avenue of their history has been explored - but the one that has no end is their present. The future still belongs to New Order.

New Order played:
Singularity
Ceremony
Age of Consent
5 8 6
Restless
Lonesome Tonight
Your Silent Face
Tutti Frutti (with Elly Jackson)
People on the High Line (with Elly Jackson)
Bizarre Love Triangle
Waiting for the Sirens' Call
Plastic
The Perfect Kiss
True Faith
Temptation
Encore:
Atmosphere (Joy Division)
Love Will Tear Us Apart (Joy Division)
Blue Monday