NEW ORDER, UP CLOSE AND JOYOUS : <i> The old order changeth, yielding place to new....</i> : --Alfred, Lord Tennyson, : “Idylls of the King”

New Order is not the usual sort of rock band--and that’s an understatement. As in its days as Joy Division, New Order has no interest in smiling or hopping around on stage or talking to an audience, leading some observers to consider it cold and distant despite stirring dance songs like “Blue Monday.”

Jonathan Demme knows better, and wanted to prove it in the video he directed for the group’s single, “The Perfect Kiss.” The director of films like “Melvin and Howard” and “Stop Making Sense” had been a longtime fan, and felt that criticisms about the group’s lack of showiness on stage overlooked an important fact about New Order--one that was a clue to its essential strength.

“When people watch the band from the back of a (concert) room, New Order can seem like statuelike figures,” said Demme. “You wonder if they care about what they’re doing. But when you get up closer, you see that they’re working so hard. My whole concept for the video was to show what goes on on the faces of these people while they create this rich sound. What I discovered was intense concentration and commitment to the music.”

Like Demme, New Order singer-guitarist Bernard Sumner and bassist Peter Hook, in the last of several interviews one recent afternoon at Warner Bros. Records headquarters in Burbank, felt that New Order was often misinterpreted. And even though the group (which also includes drummer Steven Morris and synthesizer player Gillian Gilbert) is beginning to attract fans who never heard of Joy Division, misconceptions about the earlier incarnation continue to haunt the three members of New Order who were in that band.

“I don’t know why people think Joy Division was just depressing,” Hook lamented. “They can’t have heard the records. They just read about it, and picture in their minds what it must have been.”

“I think it’s also because of the way he died,” Sumner interjected, referring to Joy Division singer-lyricist Ian Curtis, who hanged himself in early 1980. “People tie the two together.”

There were Curtis’ lyrics, too.

“Yeah,” Hook reluctantly agreed, “they were melancholy. Ian’s lyrics were all linked together. It was like one big story. They all had the same sort of thing going through them. Our manager always used to comment on that: ‘Don’t sing another song about death, you bastard.’ ”

Still, people tend to overlook the variety of emotions in this “band of constant sorrow,” and the fact that several of its songs rocked intensely. New Order has emerged from Joy Division’s shadow and its own early stumblings to become one of the most heartening bands of the ‘80s. Its songs offer a wider viewpoint on life and love than Curtis provided, and even division-less joy sometimes comes bursting through.

After starting off in ’81 with a listless first album, “Movement,” New Order veered off in a fresh direction. The watershed for New Order was a 1982 EP that collected the group’s first singles and a startling new song, “Temptation.” It had a vibrant, synthesizer-driven sound and words that were giddily life-affirming. Yet the stance was still as offbeat, honest and unique as Joy Division. The song was also a turning point for Sumner, whose raw vocals had often seemed thin and indifferent before.

“ ‘Temptation’ was the definite point where I started to enjoy singing,” Sumner confirmed. “Before that, I never understood quite what singing was, or why anybody would want to sing.”

The reluctant rock star didn’t want to write lyrics, either--”I never listened to lyrics on records.” However, most of New Order’s wordsmithing has fallen to him too, with the rest being group efforts.

When New Order rose from the ashes of Joy Division, the members quickly wrote the music for eight songs. Then they discovered a little problem: No one wanted to step into Curtis’ shoes and take responsibility for adding the words and singing them.

“Really, it was like starting again,” recalled Sumner. “We couldn’t believe it. It was like we hadn’t been in a group before.”

“The absence of a vocalist was the most difficult thing,” Hook said. “It was like having a car and someone steals one of your wheels. You try to carry on, but you think, ‘This isn’t going to go.’ ”

For a while, they thought of bringing a new singer into the band. “It crossed our minds,” explained Sumner, “but there was nobody you could look at and say, ‘That’s the one.’ ”

All three men had a go at singing. Hook seemed a likely candidate, being the only person in Joy Division besides Curtis who’d sung on record. But he didn’t fancy playing bass and singing at the same time. “It’s like doing this,” he explained, trying to pat his head and rub his stomach simultaneously.

Still, Sumner (who’s changed his name back to that from Albrecht, a stepfather’s name he used for a long time) has wound up doing both much of the writing and all of the lead singing. The reluctance is lessening. “Now I can see what people get out of singing, the pleasure of it,” Sumner smiled. “So it’s a lot easier. But I’m still learning.”

There is something about Joy Division and New Order so uniquely moving and appealing that no other band will do when a fan is in the mood to hear what they have to offer. Two things seem to help most in setting the groups apart from the herd of rock bands, and even from other adventurous groups: simplicity and meaning.

“Sometimes,” Hook said with a laugh, “we get almost paranoid about being too simple.” Putting too much emphasis on technique “destroys something,” he believes. “It’s a lot easier for me to listen to something simple and natural.”

“I think it gets across to people better,” Sumner agreed. He paused, as if unsure whether to admit something. “I always like things to be simple because I think really slow,” he said. “I do actually think very, very slow. Music that’s simple is the only kind that gets through to me.”

Therein lies much of New Order’s genius--a word most rock musicians connect with how fast and complex they can run their fingers over their instruments. “Elegia,” the beautiful, sonata-like instrumental on the new, marvelous “Low-Life” album, reminds one that Beethoven (Sumner’s favorite composer) achieved much of his effect through deceptively simple means. “In fact,” said Hook, “ ‘Elegia’ is actually 22 minutes long, and had to be cut for the album. We hope to put the full-length version on the B side of a single soon.”

The simple approach made it easier for Gillian Gilbert, Morris’ girlfriend, to move into the band around the time “Movement” was recorded.

Modern synthesizers helped too, requiring merely a push of the right button or key at the right time to “play” complicated-sounding arpeggios. Gilbert’s role remains relatively peripheral. Her synthesizer work, say Sumner and Hook, is “guided” by the three original members, but she “takes a great deal of interest” in the music and makes it possible to duplicate the rich, full sound of New Order’s records in live performance (no performances on this trip, though the band may tour America later this summer).

Simplicity, though, would hardly have been enough without the group’s creativity and its disdain for falseness. Asked what made Joy Division so extraordinary, Hook rubbed his beard a moment and replied: “I think it was just because we meant it.”

Sumner nodded his head enthusiastically. “Exactly. It’s the same in New Order. People appreciate the fact that you mean it. It shows through the nice melodies and everything.”

That dedication remains in New Order’s more upbeat music as well. “If we were still Joy Division,” said Hook, “we’d be playing the same music (that New Order plays).”

Would Curtis have evolved musically too, had he lived?

“Oh yeah,” enthused Hook. “Ian was starting to play instruments--guitar and synthesizer. He was going to play synthesizer when we did ‘She’s Lost Control’ live.”

Hook pointed to this eminently danceable Joy Division song as proof that Curtis certainly didn’t mind working within a steadily rhythmic frame. “He played in a way that was dead-simple and very strange, but very good. It would have been interesting to see.”

“We are Joy Division,” Sumner said. “Joy Division is us.”

Hook smiled at the thought. “Yeah,” he agreed. “We’re just masquerading as New Order.”