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Waiting for the Sirens' Call
Waiting for the Sirens' Call in Bloomington, MN
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When
New Order
returned in 2001 with their first new record in eight years, the album they created (
Get Ready
) was given a great deal of leeway by fans (if not critics). Was it original? Not very. Although the band never recycled a riff, many of the songs recalled not just the band's salad days, but often specific performances from '80s touchstones
Brotherhood
or
Low-life
. What saved
from irrelevance was a brace of great songs, a new look at the band as capable rockers, and what's more, that uncanny ability to produce timeless, ever-fresh recordings. Almost as surprising as that comeback record was its follow-up,
Waiting for the Sirens' Call
, which arrived in 2005. If
's ambition was only to reinforce themselves in their fans' imaginations as members of a working band (a la their contemporaries
Echo & the Bunnymen
or even
Duran Duran
, for that matter), then the album is a success. Unfortunately, however, the adjectives that need to be attached to this record -- workmanlike, customary, unembarrassing -- aren't going to make music fans flood the record stores seeking copies.
Bernard Sumner
showed the effects of a writing drought, returning to old musical themes he'd visited (and revisited) before, and writing lyrics that make their 1993 single
"Regret"
a career classic in comparison. Titling a dramatic rocker
"Dracula's Castle"
may be perfectly acceptable, but then making explicit mention of that metaphor within a set of clumsy lyrics ("You came in the night and took my heart/To Dracula's castle, in the dark") is taking the easy way out, to say the least. The first single,
"Krafty,"
makes the band's ties to
Kraftwerk
obvious, but while the German motorische experts manufactured cleverly simplistic productions, they never reached the rudimentary levels of this single. (And they surely knew better than making it sound like they meant it, as
Sumner
does, with the awful rhyme "But the world is a wonderful place/With mountains, lakes, and the human race.") Even the mainstream
dance
tracks,
"Jetstream"
and
"Guilt Is a Useless Emotion,"
evince a cold heartlessness that the band never strayed into during the '80s. If
continue making albums every several years instead of every decade, critics will quickly begin to strain for new ways to describe
Peter Hook
's plangent bass work or
's half-bemused, half-baffled songwriting and vocal delivery. Still, that's nothing compared to what
might be reduced to recycling. ~ John Bush
New Order
returned in 2001 with their first new record in eight years, the album they created (
Get Ready
) was given a great deal of leeway by fans (if not critics). Was it original? Not very. Although the band never recycled a riff, many of the songs recalled not just the band's salad days, but often specific performances from '80s touchstones
Brotherhood
or
Low-life
. What saved
from irrelevance was a brace of great songs, a new look at the band as capable rockers, and what's more, that uncanny ability to produce timeless, ever-fresh recordings. Almost as surprising as that comeback record was its follow-up,
Waiting for the Sirens' Call
, which arrived in 2005. If
's ambition was only to reinforce themselves in their fans' imaginations as members of a working band (a la their contemporaries
Echo & the Bunnymen
or even
Duran Duran
, for that matter), then the album is a success. Unfortunately, however, the adjectives that need to be attached to this record -- workmanlike, customary, unembarrassing -- aren't going to make music fans flood the record stores seeking copies.
Bernard Sumner
showed the effects of a writing drought, returning to old musical themes he'd visited (and revisited) before, and writing lyrics that make their 1993 single
"Regret"
a career classic in comparison. Titling a dramatic rocker
"Dracula's Castle"
may be perfectly acceptable, but then making explicit mention of that metaphor within a set of clumsy lyrics ("You came in the night and took my heart/To Dracula's castle, in the dark") is taking the easy way out, to say the least. The first single,
"Krafty,"
makes the band's ties to
Kraftwerk
obvious, but while the German motorische experts manufactured cleverly simplistic productions, they never reached the rudimentary levels of this single. (And they surely knew better than making it sound like they meant it, as
Sumner
does, with the awful rhyme "But the world is a wonderful place/With mountains, lakes, and the human race.") Even the mainstream
dance
tracks,
"Jetstream"
and
"Guilt Is a Useless Emotion,"
evince a cold heartlessness that the band never strayed into during the '80s. If
continue making albums every several years instead of every decade, critics will quickly begin to strain for new ways to describe
Peter Hook
's plangent bass work or
's half-bemused, half-baffled songwriting and vocal delivery. Still, that's nothing compared to what
might be reduced to recycling. ~ John Bush
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