New Order - State of the Nation [12-inch]

State of the Nation is a New Order 12-inch single from 1986, back in print with its original B-side as part of the band's Brotherhood reissue campaign.

It first appeared on Factory Records the same year as Brotherhood, at a time when Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert were moving freely between guitar-driven indie rock and the sequenced electronic dance music they had done so much to popularise. Produced by the band, the song leaned firmly towards the club side of that divide, and it was later added to the CD edition of Brotherhood rather than the original vinyl.

The A-side runs past six and a half minutes, a restless, propulsive track that pairs machine rhythms with Hook's melodic bass and Sumner's cool, slightly detached vocal. On the flip, Shame of the Nation stretches to almost eight minutes, a longer, more exploratory reworking co-credited to John Robie.

Factory's 12-inch singles were a world of their own, often holding music that never turned up on the albums, and this one sits squarely in that tradition.

For collectors filling the gaps on a New Order shelf, it is a sharp reminder of how well the band understood the extended single, a format they made very much their own.