New Order “Waiting for the Sirens’
Call” Warner Brothers Records
It’s a known fact that music can influence emotion.
Listeners of The Smiths may feel morose and isolated, while fans of
The Go! Team may feel like they’re fighting Megatron on a
high-powered “Transformers” episode. Those who listen
to New Order nowadays, however, usually get a completely different
sensation ““ more along the lines of, “Wow, I hope I can
still have this much rhythm when I’m a few years from
collecting my pension like these guys.” Cheap old-age jokes
aside, New Order still manages time and again to release
impressive, if not always revolutionary, albums, and “Waiting
for the Sirens’ Call” continues this solid trend.
Coming nearly four years after “Get Ready,” the
group’s quasi-comeback album, “Waiting for the
Sirens’ Call” manages to showcase the fact that New
Order is still going strong, even if it does sound a little
familiar. With that said, “Waiting for the Sirens’
Call” seems to owe as much to 2001’s somewhat muted
“Get Ready” as it does to 1993’s synth-heavy
“Republic.” While some tracks, such as the opener
“Who’s Joe?” and the title track, are more
reminiscent of the group’s mid-’80s efforts in that
they favor more restrained and structured guitar rock, other
tracks, such as the lead single, “Krafty,” dabble more
in New Order’s late-’80s/early-’90s
experimentation with electronica. In fact, the entire middle
portion of the album is so electronically influenced that it almost
feels like stepping into a time warp and walking into a dance club
in 1996. Songs like “Dracula’s Castle” begin
focused on traditional instrumentation, then abruptly switch to
heavy bass, dance beats and full-on electronic breakdowns midway
through. The track “I Told You So” even sounds eerily
like something Ace of Base would have put out 10 years ago. While
it sounds bizarre at first, the realization eventually hits of how
cool it is that New Order is seemingly paying homage to a fond
memory and guilty pleasure of ’90s youth.
“Dracula’s Castle,” however, perfectly embodies
the spirit of “Waiting for the Sirens’ Call,”
with its abrupt shifts back and forth between dance beats and
guitar-driven melodies. “Jetstream” is another
highlight, featuring Ana Matronic of the Scissor Sisters doing what
seems to be her best Shirley Manson impression. These two tracks,
along with “I Told You So” and the
techno-right-down-to-its-title “Guilt Is A Useless
Emotion,” have one thing in common: All have an unmistakable,
foot-tapping rhythm and are immediately danceable. “Waiting
for the Sirens’ Call” may not be the most original
album ever produced, but that doesn’t make it any less fun.
But while it is unfair to knock Bernard Sumner for his lyrical
prowess (after all, he is the successor to the legendary Ian
Curtis, frontman of Joy Division), he does manage to hide a few
true stinkers among the overall sturdy songwriting of
“Waiting for the Sirens’ Call.” Seriously,
Bernard, you can do better than “Morning, Night and
Day’s” painful, “I just want some action/ Give me
satisfaction/ Morning, night and day.” If people wanted a
sequel to Poison’s “I Want Action,” they’d
ask for it. Then again, perhaps Sumner and company are ironically
paying homage to yet another icon of Pop Culture Trivial Pursuit.
And, well, when you’ve been around for 25 years, you’re
allowed to do something like that. -Mark Humphrey