As I was updating the music on the blog, I came across this song and was inspired to give my 5 cents on the most recent New Order release. First let me give you a little rant. My biggest peeve is no matter what an artist that's been around for twenty-plus years produces, it will be, at best, criticized and at worst ignored. But if the band is putting together quality work, this is just wrong. If you've survived that long, no one is going to give you credit. Why? Well, part of it is repitition. Good music grows better with repetition; weak music goes the other way. And when I was 20 years old, I would listen to stuff literally a hundred times. Now, I only hear a song hundred times if it's overplayed on the radio like U2. Secondly, music is a very powerful associative/memory tool. When I hear certain songs, I can clearly smell things, feel the temperature, what I was experiencing, feel what it was like to me when I was first heard that song. Part of that is the repetition. But I'm a different person now and some people feel that the new stuff is a betrayal of that. How does a rock band grow up gracefully then ? Well,t he public won't allow it. But I say just keep doing your thing and what makes you happy. Last year's Cure album, while not as good as Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me or Disintegration (best three album sides ever produced in under two years?) holds it own to any of the mid-1980's albums and exceed albums like Wild Mood Swings. I would include acts like Mark Knopfler or Bob Dylan in this category. This is actually one of the issues that Dylan addresses in the recent documentary - he already realized people wanted to categorize him and choke off his growth almost from the start of his career. (the opposite example would be the Rolling Stones have put out since about 1984 since these are just excuses to tour although I would tell anyone it's worth $200 bucks to see them, not $10 for the cd).
New Order is a strong example of this. The odd thing is that Sirens' Call is almost identical to Get Ready but while the critics panned that album, the new one has only attracted praise.
I was a relative late comer to New Order. Part of that is that in college my musical tastes were too serious to appreciate gay dance music (too bad I didn;t know about Joy Division ). Secondly, I just couldn't relate to guy singing about wanting to fly back home to his wife and child and missing them. Needless to say, all that has changed and lyrically, me and Bernard Sumner have converged at where we are in life.
One of the things I like about New Order is that the lyrics come off as ordinary stuff. Bernard is an intelligent family guy who fancies a pint, works hard at his job and struggles with the human condition. This is not the emotional cripple of traditional alternative music (how weird is that phraseology). This is a just guy trying to make sense of the world and the emotional entaglements of his own life (present and past). That's a guy I get and relate to (I love Trent but I don't go through life in a either a state of rage or self-pity).
I think the secret of New Order is that it is not really "gay dance music." They keyboards, drum machines and sythns are not the heart of the music. They are more like the background or the foundation, like the role the drum and bass usually play for most bands. What makes this music great is the interplay between Bernard Sumner's voice, Peter Hook's bass and the guitars. The bass is well know but if you listened to the guitar, it is plays a much more important role than is obvious. Listen to the guitar work on "Turn."
Sirens' Call is not going into any new territory, but the songs seem more connected to each other than Get Ready. The general vibe is a group of people having a good time playing together. It really seems more targeted as something to be played live. "Guilt is useless emotion" is a classic New Order song. "Jetstream" is hokey but I spend so much time on planes lately that I get it. "Working overtime" and "Hey Now" are the type of rockers that I would expect more from the Smiths (but with more bass)(Electronic?). "Morning night and day" I think is my favorite because it is more unusual song structure. But most of the album is like "Krafty" (playing on the blog) - steady, traditional New Order songs.
There's no new ground broken here. We simply get twelve new New Order songs. and there's nothing wrong with that.
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