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Barnes & Noble REVIEW OF GET READY
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Barnes & Noble
You gotta hand it to New Order -- having led the post-punk masses to the dance floor at the dawn of the '80s, they've since watched rockers cede to DJs and DJs cede to rockers once again, before emerging just on time for an '80s revival with an album that no critic could accuse of trading on nostalgia. The exhilarating, absorbing Get Ready, the band's first album since 1993's Republic, sees the original lineup warming up their signature icy disco groove with a My Bloody Valentine guitar-pop haze. Bernard Sumner's brilliant deadpan vocals and Peter Hook's bass-driven melody lines still drive this sleek, beat-happy train, but from the first bars of the album opener, "Crystal," scuffed-up guitars summon the harrowing atmospheres of American Psycho and Less than Zero. In New Order's absence, ironic distance and rock-tronica have become standard issue, but the Brit quartet's trademark lyrical ambivalence still unsettles, putting them miles ahead of both modern rock's therapy-speak and dance music's faux-soul histrionics. Take the acoustic guitar- and strings-filled "Run Wild," which sounds like a comfort to a dying friend yet ends with the promise "I'm gonna live to get high." Slippery and faceless as ever -- the "Crystal" video features a band of hipster ingénues miming to the track -- New Order mine tension from Sumner's detached delivery, as incongruous over the churning guitars of "Slow Jam" as in its almost-Hemingway detail ("The sea was very rough/It made me feel sick/But I like that kind of stuff"). Disciples Billy Corgan and Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream chime in on "60 Miles an Hour" and "Rock the Shack," respectively, underscoring not only the relevance of New Order two decades on but their inevitability. For its controlled spasms of passion beneath ever-shifting layers of meaning, Get Ready may be the most thrilling slab of ennui-rock since the heyday of the Velvet Underground. Welcome back, comrades. Mark Schwartz
Barnes & Noble
You gotta hand it to New Order -- having led the post-punk masses to the dance floor at the dawn of the '80s, they've since watched rockers cede to DJs and DJs cede to rockers once again, before emerging just on time for an '80s revival with an album that no critic could accuse of trading on nostalgia. The exhilarating, absorbing Get Ready, the band's first album since 1993's Republic, sees the original lineup warming up their signature icy disco groove with a My Bloody Valentine guitar-pop haze. Bernard Sumner's brilliant deadpan vocals and Peter Hook's bass-driven melody lines still drive this sleek, beat-happy train, but from the first bars of the album opener, "Crystal," scuffed-up guitars summon the harrowing atmospheres of American Psycho and Less than Zero. In New Order's absence, ironic distance and rock-tronica have become standard issue, but the Brit quartet's trademark lyrical ambivalence still unsettles, putting them miles ahead of both modern rock's therapy-speak and dance music's faux-soul histrionics. Take the acoustic guitar- and strings-filled "Run Wild," which sounds like a comfort to a dying friend yet ends with the promise "I'm gonna live to get high." Slippery and faceless as ever -- the "Crystal" video features a band of hipster ingénues miming to the track -- New Order mine tension from Sumner's detached delivery, as incongruous over the churning guitars of "Slow Jam" as in its almost-Hemingway detail ("The sea was very rough/It made me feel sick/But I like that kind of stuff"). Disciples Billy Corgan and Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream chime in on "60 Miles an Hour" and "Rock the Shack," respectively, underscoring not only the relevance of New Order two decades on but their inevitability. For its controlled spasms of passion beneath ever-shifting layers of meaning, Get Ready may be the most thrilling slab of ennui-rock since the heyday of the Velvet Underground. Welcome back, comrades. Mark Schwartz
Thanks to: Marc Joseph
