Just over 20 years later – Is there still ‘Truth Faith’ in this track to soar? New post time!

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Good Morning to you! My name is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time again for me to get typing up for your daily track on the blog, because it is always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of new music every day! It’s Way Back Wednesday – where we revisit one of the important sounds of the past that has influenced the exciting, fresh sounds of the present. New Order are cool – and it’s about ‘Fine Time’ that we featured some of their material on the blog. Although this track probably isn’t given the same mainstream airplay as ‘True Faith’, ‘Blue Monday’ or ‘World In Motion’, it still reached #11 in the UK Singles Chart. Although I probably wouldn’t consider New Order to be one of my top favourite artists upon my initial instincts – I have consistently enjoyed the music that Bernard Summer and his co-horts have put out over the years, and since a bulkload of that music was from before my time, I think that has something to say about their funky musicianship and crossover appeal. ‘Fine Time’ was officially released in 1988 as the A-side of a 12″ Vinyl release, which included the B-side of ‘Don’t Do It’. Written and recorded partially while the band were on tour in Ibiza, the lyrics were modeled after a witty incident where drummer Stephen Morris’s car was towed, and he had nearly forgotten to pay the fine for the penalty. It was another modest hit for the band in the UK, but it also found success within the Top 10 chart in Finland, Ireland and New Zealand, along with finding commercial success in the US, where it landed a spot on three of Billboard’s genre charts. The track was later included as a single from the band’s fifth studio album, ‘Technique’, a year later. Let’s cast our minds back with the official music video below.

“My car had been towed away and I had to remind myself to go and pay the fine”, Summer said to his press team on the track back in the day, “I just wrote ‘Fine Time’ on this piece of paper, to remind myself to go get it and, I thought that’s a good title” was the statement that he used to explain how, at times, the human eye is the most responsible component for creativity. The critics were also big fans of the single, with Aaron Febre of Niner Times writing that it’s off-kilter sound had “refurbished the band and gave them a fresh start, and Ned Raggett of AllMusic writing that it “not only had paid attention to the acid-house/Ibiza explosion but used it for its own ends, capturing the frenetic energy that the musical eruption on British shores had unleashed with strength and style” in his review. It certainly has a vibrancy and a sense of experimentation which gives it a distinctive edge, especially for a group who were off the back of their commercial peak at the time, with the low-pitched voice samples and the hyper-energetic synthesizer sequences going for an outgoing vibe. The keyboard sections also feel wonky and not conventionally structured, with an overall Disco influence that feels subverted by the explorations of Neo-Psychedelia. The vocals contemplate the moral universe of the dancefloor, and by extension, party life. Lyrics like “You’re much too young, to be a part of me” and “You’ve got class, but most of all, You’ve got love technique” feel enigmatic, but witty due to their drunk-sounding effects. We get to a bridge were “The past doesn’t matter” is repeated by a robotic sound effect that evokes the Industrial Motorik of Kraftwerk or Visage, but the instrumentation feels less flat and the lyrics feel more daft. Overall, it is a likeable anthem because it sounds like something I would feature on my “That Was A Hit” segment of my radio show, in the sense that it feels like a hit that was unusual for being that. This clearly breaks away from the typical Pop format with the seemingly unrelated vocal hooks and the musical non-sequiturs making for a strange mixture. It felt like a bold creative direction for the group to take, however, because they were determined to re-invent with the use of a crazy, silly ode to the Ibiza Club and Acid House dance music explosion and, for all of these risks, it succeeds in paying them off.

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Well, it really has been a pleasure to stop and muse as always… but it’s about “fine time” that I got on with a few other jobs on today’s list now. I’ll be ready to go back at it again tomorrow, however, with an in-depth look at a collaborative single that seems to have gone down as a hit for the BBC Radio 6Music listener’s group on Facebook, coming from a lesser-known US indie Post-Rock band from Illinois who based their debut album on the frontman’s early experience of living among a Cult. If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when every new daily post is up and why not like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime/