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Waiting for the Sirens' Call
Artist: New Order
(London/Warner)
Reviewer: CHUA CHERN TOONG
One approaches something like this with a heightened level of trepidation. After all, New Order, one of the greatest and most important British bands of all time, is notorious for raising expectations with each eagerly anticipated new album (and putting longtime fans through agonising, protracted periods of waiting).
While most of the fears that these hoary Mancunians will, horror of horrors, put out a sub-standard work have been put to rest in the past, the worry still lingers like the ghost of long-deceased lead vocalist Ian Curtis.
This sense of paranoia is compounded by the fact that the band effectively broke up after the disaster-wracked tour for 1993’s Republic, and while 2001’s comeback effort Get Ready was the band’s best work since the late 80s, the stakes were inevitably, perhaps unreasonably, raised in expectation of the official follow-up.
Will Messrs Sumner, Hook and Morris finally falter and fall off their lofty perch, after more than two decades of making some of the best rock music of the 20th and 21st centuries?
Be relieved, then, because Waiting for the Sirens’ Call deftly delivers on the promise of a New Order piece de resistance, and then some.
The usual creative elements are here: the innovative blending of post-punk sensibilities and alternative-dance grooves (although, unlike Get Ready, there is less guitar interplay here), the eminently accessible melodic substance and, perhaps most importantly, the band members’ individual skills.
Bernard Sumner’s raw, seismic-quality guitar riffs, Stephen Morris’s astoundingly precise, drum machine-approximating beats, and Peter Hook’s familiar, high-register bass lines are all in high evidence here.
However, keyboardist Gillian Gilbert has been replaced by multi-instrumentalist Phil Cunningham, although that personnel change doesn’t result in any artistic dilution. Production this time around is handled by studio veterans John Leckie and Stephen Street, who manage to bring a more polished sheen to the proceedings – a noticeable but no less potent change from the rougher aesthetic conjured by Steve Osborne on Get Ready.
Who’s Joe offers a great start to what sounds to be a fantastic record, a sleek revision of the rough-and-ready mechanics of 1986’s Brotherhood album, which flows effortlessly into the tuneful Hey Now What You Doing. It’s basically a showcase for Peter Hook’s singularly unique bass work, leavened by some tasteful (electric and acoustic) guitar lines.
The title track, informed by some Power, Corruption and Lies-era synth strings, is all frosted-glass elegance, a classic New Order single in the making worthy of inclusion alongside the band’s peerless 80s output.
New kid on the block Cunningham shows off his axe-wielding skills to particularly great effect here, alongside his older colleagues’ more experienced playing.
First single Krafty is akin to a New Order 101 crash course, a flawless archetype of melodic guitar outlines, Sumner’s blissful, wonderfully nondescript vocals, underpinned by Morris’ fastidious drumming and a typically Hooky pounding bass line.
The stop-start I Told You So sees new Order go the faux-ragga route, a slowly unfolding number that sounds rather ineffectual at first but gets its hooks into you after a few spins, mostly through its bouncy vibe.
The Technicolor-heavy Morning Night and Day revisits the drug-addled and alcohol-soaked days of Madchester, while the weirdly titled Dracula’s Castle sounds like an impromptu jam rounded up within a more disciplined, traditional New Order groove.
The glistening, neo-new wave Jetstream features Scissor Sisters’ Ana Matronic on backing vocals, and constitutes obvious second-single material, as proven by its inherent singalong quality. The wonderfully titled Guilt Is a Useless Emotion is perhaps the most danceable track on the entire album, a positively joyous tune featuring some slinky female backing vocals, and an impeccable exercise for Morris’ unlimited proficiencies with a drum machine.
Turn excises the usual synths from the surface almost completely, leaving behind a simple, brooding, Smiths-influenced guitar-and-bass showcase, making for a suitable penultimate performance. Closer Working Overtime is a no-holds-barred, thumping neo-glam-rock monster that provides for a gloriously intentional over-the-top conclusion to a truly remarkable record.
In short, Waiting for the Sirens’ Call is yet another landmark in New Order’s long, illustrious career, and easily one of the top-ten contenders for album of the year accolades.
While it’s a bit too soon to really label any of the songs here a certified New Order classic, and place them amongst the hallowed ranks of authoritative standards like Blue Monday, Temptation or True Faith, the album, when taken as a whole, is still a remarkable record, and effortlessly matches Get Ready in terms of musical quality, artistic boldness and plain, simple listenability. Another all-round winner from Manchester’s finest musical export.
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