Waiting For The Sirens' Call Reviews -- Cut and paste what you find here!

http://www.sundayherald.com/48562

Bang out of order

Rock: Indie icons New Order once redefined musical boundaries, but is the old magic still there? By Leon McDermott

WHEN most people think of New Order, it’s probably for one of two reasons: Blue Monday being the biggest-selling 12" single of all time, or John Barnes’s terrible rapping on their 1990 World Cup song World In Motion.

They’re a band forever caricatured by a couple of pop-culture moments in the sun, and not necessarily as the hugely influential colossus that they in fact are. Or at least were; it’s been well over a decade since the band released anything that really merited the New Order name.

When Ian Curtis committed suicide in May of 1980, just after the sessions for Joy Division’s second album, Closer, had finished, the remaining three members disbanded. A few months later, however, they had regrouped. They added Gillian Gilbert on keyboards (she left, finally, in 2001, leaving the three original members on their own again), and Bernard Sumner took over vocal duties, despite his thin, reedy voice and his questionable way with a rhyming couplet. He still hasn’t learned; one of the many lyrical howlers on Waiting For The Sirens’ Call is the introduction to Hey Now What You Doing, which runs “Hey now, what you doing /Don’t go down the road to ruin” ).

Still, New Order were never about the lyrics, or about Sumner’s voice. They were about Peter Hook’s soaring, high-register basslines, about rhythmic propulsion, about deceptive, nagging choruses, about the synthesis of the metallic and the organic. If Joy Division were pegged as trenchcoated miserabilists, then New Order were something else, and it seems to have taken until 2005 for other bands to catch up, with bright young things The Killers and The Bravery leading the charge.

New Order’s trick – brittle, robotic rhythms coupled with melancholic, but utterly irresistible melodies which seemed to pine even as they scaled the heights – is something that’s now so ubiquitous as to seem utterly obvious. But a quarter of a century ago, it was a statistical anomaly. Sure, The Cure did moody, and Depeche Mode did electronic, but New Order’s spin was to weave these two threads into something that contained both the nostalgic and the futuristic: they were gleaming steel underneath grey Manchester skies.

They were instrumental in establishing Manchester as a musical city; indeed, had they not paid for the Hacienda, and helped keep Tony Wilson’s Factory Records solvent until the Happy Mondays’s disastrous recording sessions for Yes Please in 1992, British music would sound a whole lot different.

In 1983, Blue Monday signalled that New Order were working on a substantially different wavelength to their peers. And until 1993’s Regret, it remained that way. They wrote perfect pop singles – Bizarre Love Triangle, True Faith – and absorbed the head-rush aesthetic of house and techno on 1989’s Technique, the night out before the chill-out session that Primal Scream staged with Screamadelica.

Listening to Waiting For The Sirens’ Call, you wonder what went wrong. Is it that Sumner and Hook will both be 50 next year? (Drummer Stephen Morris, baby of the group, is only 48.) Have they exhausted themselves? After all, this is only their eighth album in 25 years, and comes three years after their last album, the patchy Get Ready. Or is it that, having laid waste to countless boundaries in their first decade of existence, anything they subsequently churn out is going to sound tepid in comparison? Possibly, it’s all three.

There are flashes of wonder here: the growling bass and ringing guitars of the single, Krafty – particularly during the chorus – point towards past glories; Hook’s bass in conjunction with beautiful, descending keyboard lines, on the title track; the moody and turbulent Morning Night And Day, where a fat, nasty bassline does battle with jagged chords from Sumner’s guitar. Dracula’s Castle also makes the grade; with pizzicato strings, Hook’s bass somewhere up in the rafters, and Morris pounding the life out of his drums, it comes closest to recapturing what makes New Order great.

Over the course of nearly an hour, this is nowhere near enough. The nadir is I Told You So, a lumbering six-minute slog through New Order’s conception of dub, complete with jaunty, off-the-beat piano, and synths – mercifully low in the mix – that, come the track’s conclusion, start to sound like a badly-tuned banjo.

This is a band who were once capable of writing melodies that lodged themselves in your brain for weeks, months, years. And while it would be churlish to expect them to write Blue Monday, Perfect Kiss, or Round And Round over and over, it’s depressing to see them not so much rest on as flatten their laurels.

In New Order Story, a documentary about the band made in 1993, Peter Hook was asked who the laziest member of New Order is. Without flinching, he said, with typically black Mancunian wit: “Ian Curtis.” On the evidence of Waiting For The Sirens’ Call, however, the answer would now appear to be “all of them”.

Recommended download: Dracula’s Castle

27 March 2005

http://www.musicomh.com/albums3/new-order.htm

New Order - Waiting For The Sirens' Call (London)  UK release date: 28 March 2005

track listing

1. Who's Joe
2. Hey Now, What You Doing
3. Waiting For The Sirens' Call
4. Krafty
5. I Told You So
6. Morning Night And Day
7. Dracula's Castle
8. Jetstream
9. Guilt Is A Useless Emotion
10. Turn
11. Working Overtime

If there’s one thing guaranteed to make you feel very old indeed, it’s the news that both Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook will turn 50 next year. Surely not? Yet it’s true, those doyens of the Manchester scene, who gave us gems such as Temptation, Fine Time and of course Blue Monday, who've swallowed and snorted more illegal substances than most of us have had hot dinners, have nearly made it to their 50s.

Yet New Order have never been regarded as dinosaurs - instead they're rapidly turning into one of the most respected bands around today. Collaborations with Billy Corgan and an appearance on Gwen Stefani’s album has shown just how influential they've become and Ana Matronic from everyone's favourite camp New Yorkers Scissor Sisters contributes backing vocals here.

Today’s New Order isn't the same as the classic line up that bestrode the 80s. Gillian Gilbert has long since retired to motherhood, her place taken by former Marion guitarist Phil Cunningham, which has led to a less synth-based sound than their heyday. Yet this hasn't led to a drop in quality - Waiting For The Sirens Call is their best effort since 1989’s Technique and if it doesn’t quite match that opus, well not many records do.

Lead single Krafty has already divided some fans for its poppy nature, but as soon as Peter Hook’s trademark, low slung bass sound creeps in it’s clear that this is vintage New Order. The lyrics are, quite frankly, atrocious ("I know the world is a beautiful place, with mountains, lakes and the human race" for example), but the sheer addictive, uplifting nature of the song buries itself into your brain and remains there for days.

Another radio-friendly moment is the driving Turn, its catchy chorus belying the song’s downbeat message - "turn your eyes from me, It's time for me to go" pleads Sumner over yet another classic Hooky bassline. The jangly guitars give the song an upbeat quality but melancholy lurks just round the corner if the song is studied closer.

Not everything is so successful though. The strange ragga stylings of I Told You So sound oddly dated, Who’s Joe, although reasonably catchy, lacks the big impact that an opening track should have, and Dracula’s Castle is pretty forgettable.

However, the best moments on here equal New Order at their peak. The serene, gliding title track is just sublime, Sumner’s reflective vocal sounding better than ever and striking just the right note between regret and wonder. The influence of Cunningham should not be underestimated here either - the closing track Working Overtime is unlike anything the band have ever done, a knockabout, almost rockabilly, guitar workout that Iggy Pop would be proud of. It’s a magnificent way to end the album (and hearing Sumner shout "hey" before the guitar solo is one of life’s great joys).

So, 20 years after the halcyon days of Madchester, the Hacienda and Tony Wilson, New Order are still going strong. It’s a fair bet that many of today’s bands (Bloc Party and The Killers spring to mind to name but two) wouldn't exist without them. If you've somehow managed to go through life without discovering what all the fuss is about them, buy this now and catch up.

• John Murphy

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk

New Order – Waiting For The Sirens’ Call - track by track review

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Who’s Joe? – 4/5

Kicks off with some mournful strings like Ian Brown's F.E.A.R., but Who's Joe? soon turns into jangly indie/electro New Order straight from their Republic period. There’s a catchy as hell guitar and bass interlude towards the end which suggests this could be the next single, which would make it the first and last dreamy pop song about a tramp to hit the charts.

Hey Now What You Doing? – 3/5 Continues in the same vein as the opener until a rather introspective chorus kicks in. Barney daringly tries to rhyme ‘future’ with ‘computer’ while new guitarist Phil pops up and smears a dirty guitar solo over the middle bit.

Waiting For The Sirens’ Call – 3/5

Barney says it’s about death or infidelity, but you'd never notice as he sings with such wide-eyed wonder and the song is wrapped up in such a sugary coating. It clocks in at nearly six minutes, while throughout Hooky’s bass sounds like it’s about to break into Monaco’s What Do You Want From Me?

Krafty – 4/5

Lead single and by far the most euphoric moment on the album. Barney starts out all depressed at the mundanity of working life, but then the xylophones kick in, followed by a monster bass solo, and suddenly there’s a cheesy grin slapped across his face. Krafty's nowhere as immediate as Crystal, the opening single from last album Get Ready, but it does grow on you quicker than a particularly virulent dose of athlete’s foot.

I Told You So – 2/5

It’s taken New Order 25 years to incorporate dancehall rhythms into their sound, and after hearing I Told You So you’d wish they’d waited another few decades. It’s like early nineties dub dance acts like Leftfield and Bomb The Bass in chill-out mode. The very definition of an album filler.

Morning Night And Day – 4/5

Straight after the lowest point on the record comes one its highest peaks. Morning Night And Day could be the finest five-minute electropop ode to hangovers in the world - ever. Built around an almost endless loop of keyboard noises and a great chorus, it's another potential single.

Dracula’s Castle – 3/5

It was written in a courthouse built for Henry VIII, so as you can imagine there’s quite a sombre, vaguely spooky vibe to it. It’s the closest they get to Joy Division on the album, all brooding bass and guitar parts, though there’s lots of squelchy synth noises too for the last few minutes.

Jetstream – 3/5

Starts off plodding and lethargic, but leave that skip button alone. The nagging melody starts to make sense by the time Scissor Sisters’ Ana Matronic drifts in to add her vocals. Not a highlight by any means, but there’s something maddeningly infectious about the way the pair sing "da da na na na na" at the end like it's a twisted nursery rhyme.

Guilt Is A Useless Emotion – 4/5

The second track on the album with Les Rhythmes Digitales’ Stuart Price in the producer’s chair, and as you might expect, the most overtly Eighties track on the album. The beats pulse and surge, weaving in and out of some digitised handclaps, while Ana Matronic's breathy Kylie-style backing vocals fade in and out. Pure pop.

Turn – 3/5

Set to be a permanent fixture on drivetime radio, Turn is relentlessly upbeat with big cascading guitars jangling throughout. But it's masking a rather downcast message - "Turn your eyes from me," insists a subdued Barney. Intriguing.

Working Overtime – 4/5

And now for something completely different. This could have been on The Stooges self-titled album or The Beatles' Revolver, or indeed on any modern day Primal Scream album. Vintage guitar fuzz of the highest order and quite unlike anything New Order have put their name to before.

Overall verdict

Four different producers contributed to the 11 tracks but Waiting For The Sirens' Call still flows surprisingly well. There are at least three more potential singles waiting to follow Krafty into the top ten in Working Overtime, Guilt Is A Useless Emotion, and Morning Night And Day. But more significantly, the album as a whole improves with every listen.