Low-Life finds New Order working in much the same post-punk-tinged-dance mode as Power, Corruption & Lies, which makes it more of a refinement than the giant leap that spanned the distance between Power and Movement. So Low-Life ends up occupying this weird space of actually being New Order’s best album yet without actually feeling like it is. By most metrics, Power, Corruption & Lies is the flashier album in the band’s discography chronology: it’s when New Order became New Order, it’s when dance tipped the scales away from post-punk–and I mean, hell, it’s got “Age of Consent” as an opener. Low-Life does not have an “Age of Consent.” Not even close.

But I’m standing by Low-Life being the best of New Order’s first three LPs. It’s a more confident record, one that doesn’t have the tentative awkwardness of some of the mid-album tracks on Power, one that, “Age of Consent” excluded, has better songwriting. Power may have been the first New Order album, but Low-Life is the first where it’s clear that these guys know exactly what they’re doing and how to get better at it. This is perhaps no more evident than in how each album uses synths and dance beats. On Power, the synths are jarring departures, a statement to alert listeners that yes, this is the band now. And as a statement, it’s a bit blunt and clumsy in retrospect–not to detract from Power‘s excellence that I praised last time, but having now heard Low-Life, it’s clear to me that this current album is the more natural wedding of post-punk with synth dance. Low-Life doesn’t call attention to its instrumentation or song structure; it simply lets it exist, permeating the album instead of quarantining it to the middle few tracks. Songs like “The Perfect Kiss” and “This Time of Night” aren’t dance-length tracks; they’re pop tunes infused with dance grooves. And they sound great.

After these first three albums, I’m intrigued to find out where exactly the band will go next. I know from reputation that the group doesn’t ever leave the dance-post-punk vibes, but I’m intrigued to discover whether their future will feature any more leaps like Power, Corruption & Lies (certainly the development of synths and production technology over the next few years of the ’80s provides opportunities for this) or if they’ll stick to small but meaningful refinements along the lines of Low-Life. I suppose I could just find out now by listening to their albums, given that they’re all decades old at this point, but it’s kind of fun forcing myself to a scheduled chronology like this.