NEW ORDER - Waiting For The Sirens’ Call

Fair warning: when talking about the "new" New Order album, you'll see the word "new" constantly in quotation marks.

That's because "new" is a relative term, since the band born in 1980 from the ashes of Joy Division hasn't managed, for many, far too many years now, to give any real purpose to its music, getting by on occasional flashes of class and the unmistakable "New Order sound".

Being strict and demanding (and with a band of New Order's stature, it's fair to be) you have to go back to 1985, the year of the extraordinary "Low Life", to find the last time the Manchester band truly nailed an album. But in particular, the last three records - "Republic", "Get Ready" (which itself arrived eight years after its predecessor) and this "new" "Waiting For The Sirens' Call" - have deepened a crisis of inspiration that has now been dragging on for a decade (more than a decade) with no sign of recovery.

But while at least "Republic" and "Get Ready" could count on two extraordinary gems ("Regret" and "Crystal" respectively) - both, coincidentally? - placed as the opening track of their respective albums, this "new" album doesn't even have that much to partly redeem it from mediocrity: not a single track, not one, to get excited about.

There's nothing.

The "new" New Order album sees the band working alongside a trio of top-tier producers: Tore Johansson, Stephen Street and John Leckie, the latter two in particular true deus-ex-machina figures of Nineties British pop-rock (Blur, Radiohead, Cranberries, to name just the most famous, owe them a great deal).

The “new” New Order album thus opens with “Who’s Joe?”, a track that, after two of its nearly six minutes, already sounds tired and stretched thin, but which at least remains evocative.

Already the following “Hey Now What You Doing” lets you down, though, with a pop-rock of startling banality that from the very first seconds even brings to mind, God forbid, “Malibu” by Hole and a million other disposable songs of its kind.

The title track hits on a touching melody, but likewise shows no sign of the vitality, inventiveness or personality that go beyond the usual, predictable formal perfection.

And if the more “rock” tracks leave more than a few doubts, the more “synth” ones are even worse: “I Told You So” attempts the dub route, and is downright embarrassing, as is the revivalist disco of “Jetstream”.

The only, very faint signs of life come from the catchy “Krafty” and from “Dracula’s Castle”, which tries to pick up the pace and inject some energy into the band’s tried-and-tired formula, while also delivering the most complex and imaginative arrangement on the record (at least compared with the overall flatness of the album).

The album closes with two more insipid rock songs, “Turn” and “Working Overtime”.

The first is elegant, but let down by yet another melody of very little impact and hopeless banality; the second hits hard, trying to ride the new wave revival that a host of young bands in England and the US have been bringing increasingly back into fashion in recent years, but ends up losing out even against any random track by Franz Ferdinand.

In short, what is one to make of this “new” New Order record?

Unfortunately, being the “masters” is no longer enough to still sound current, or to still feel the need for albums like this.

The “trademark sound” isn’t enough; the sound, the touch, however unmistakable, aren’t enough; class and craft, however rock-solid, aren’t enough.

“Waiting For The Sirens’ Call” is simply an inconsequential record, indeed at times downright bad.

And it is, sadly, yet another – the worst – inconsequential record produced by a band that was once glorious, now just a pale, pointless shadow of itself.

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01/09/2013