80s Cup R5M11 - Profile 20-6 Darkness Fish

[Penk!]

A

New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle



B

Strawberry Switchblade - Since Yesterday

[Dayodead]

Like the SS song, but this is a tough match...Gotta Vote A

[toomanyhatz]

It's going to take a very special song for me to vote for New Order. This isn't it.

B is slight, but goofy fun the likes of which couldn't really have happened in any other decade.

[Deebank]

We're deep in the digital heart of the 80s with these two.

The SS tracks starts off with some nasty low bit rate sampled brass parping away horribly and doesn't really improve from that point.

And here NO have progressed rapidly from the lush analogue textures of Power, Corruption & Lies to something more pingy and metallic and not nearly as wholesome. I found both Brotherhood and Low Life had that brittle early digital feel to them - I think both were early attempts at digital mastering but I could be wrong. They still touched greatness on this LP though - All Day Long nails the era's best atmospheres and textures I reckon. Anyway, BLT is a great song - there are a bunch of brilliant covers and various better mixes to prove the point.

Strawberry Switchblade was an early attempt by Alan McGee to play Svengali wasn't it? One of the girls turned in some lovely bvox on a couple of Felt tracks (I think Fortune was one) but this vocal here is weak. Sometimes that can offer a hint of charming naïveté to a song, but not here really. It's all trying a bit too hard.

Despite my misgivings over some of its faddy 80s production tricks it has got to be

A

[Diamond Dog]

I thought "I've not heard that Strawberry Switchblade track for ages"..... and it really sounded pretty duff.

"BLT" is a long long way from the best of New Order but it's plenty good enough here. A

[Purgatory Brite]

A have to vote for them this time round.

[The Modernist]

i'm sure there's a different mix of BLT that I prefer, this one sounds a little tinny and cluttered. Still it's a great song, quite touching in its vulnerability.

There's something a bit too knowing in B's attempts at 60s sunshine pop innocence. As a result it comes across as an odd, and not very attractive, mix of contrivance and soppiness. This lot had a strange afterlife, reinventing themselves as industrial folk complete with dodgy politics.

Anyway, easily A

[Polishgirl]

Oh but I do like B - in a crap but fun way. I do like the brass, and I like them.

B

[Penk!]

I think A is one of the best things New Order did: one of the occasional moments where the various elements of their sound all combined perfectly to produce a great pop song.

B is silly, a little bit fun and a lot bit pants.

[Darkness_Fish]

The bouncey sequencer and drum thing is a proper slice of Stock Aitken and Waterman, it just makes what could've been a really good song sound so cheap and plastic. It's got one of barney's rare great vocal performances, and a lovely reminder of what Peter Hook contributed. It's just a shame the thing has dated sooooo badly, it's a horrible production effort.

I loved Strawberry Switchblade from the first time I heard it, I think it was on Hits 2 or 3, following Kirsty MacColl's "New England". Not sure I ever used to listen to any of the rest of the album. It wouldn't entirely be fair for me to slag the production of BLT, and not mention how similarly cheap this is, but this is a pop duo, doing the cheap and cheerful pop thing. But they do it with such a wistful, yearning lyric that has always stuck with me as some kind of bizarre zenith of cheap-pop-poetry. And yeah, Rose McDowall did go on to sing for the extremely dodgy-politicked Death in June, but only occasionally. She had her own band (Sorrow, was it?) and sang with Current 93 quite a bit, too. The other one didn't record anything for about 30 years.

B

[Nick Danger]

B

[Jumper K]

B.

[algroth]

No doubt about it, A is a monster... But it's just about the most obvious pick one could have made for an 80s cup. B is fortunately good enough too, though since we're talking about things that have dated poorly, this sort of act and fashion look like stuff off the deeper ends of 4chan and DeviantArt nowadays.

[WG Kaspar]

A

[The Write Profile]

One of New Order’s most jubilant singles, this takes it quite handily.A.

[T. Willy Rye]

A

[never/ever]

Yes, yes.....


A

[Hightea]

A - might be an obvious pick but its better that B

A

[GoogaMooga]

A

[Rayge]

I listened to Strawberry Switchblade dfor he sake of form, and while I found it in p[arts a reasonable pastiche of a certain types of ’60s girl group sounds, no-one involved had the talent to pull it off.
In my view (sorry Dave) New Order were the best British band of the 1980s on the basis of their 12" singles, of which this is one, although as Moddie pointed out, this is far from the best mix of the tune. Much better pop song than B, too.

Got to be A