Now that Waiting for the Sirens' Call has been officially declared part of New Order's history, only eight months after release, it's time once again to reassess the group in the form of a mostly redundant compilation. Rhino calls Singles the group's "first ever career-spanning two-disc retrospective," but it's more like the group's first compilation to contain tracks from Sirens' Call. Besides, 1987's Substance spanned the group's career upon release and remains the basis for most New Order compilations (this one included), so it's no big deal. Just as importantly, over a third of the contents date from 1993 onward; that's too high a percentage to make the set an ideal introduction. Considering its title, Singles has a clear-cut purpose, unlike 2002's International. Then again, each of the 14 tracks contained on International are also here -- what amounts to an inferior version of Substance with some crucial tracks squeezed out in favor of lesser, later singles. A proper sequel to Substance, covering Technique through Sirens' Call, would've made more sense, but the lure in dressing up a combination of oft-recycled classics with slightly varying surroundings has yet to lose its appeal. Substance remains, and will likely always remain, the release to get you started.© Andy Kellman /TiVo

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For fifteen years now New Order has had to make do without a bassist, and without their co-founder Peter Hook, who stormed out in 2006. The new line-up, led by Bernard Sumner with Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert, Phil Cunningham and Tom Chapman, is clearly doing no worse, as we can tell from this new live record (their fifth in ten years) made in November 2018 in London's Alexandra Palace. The concert opens with Wagner, before raining down blow after blow on Singularity, which is one of four tracks on the setlist to be taken from the 2015 album Music Complete (the first album they made without Peter Hook). And while the record didn't win around the critics, this track makes masterful use of the old Joy Division DNA. The ghost of Ian Curtis looms over this 140-minute performance, with searing mementoes in the form of Atmosphere, Decades and Love Will Tear Us Apart which closes the set. Along the way, we get all the hits: from Blue Monday to Bizarre Love Triangle and The Perfect Kiss, all in a venue brought to the boil by an ecstatic, nostalgic audience. It's enough to cheer up even the bluest Monday. © Smaël Bouaici/Qobuz

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 Get Ready 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 New Order's ambition was only to reinforce themselves in their fans' imaginations as members of a working band (à 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 New Order 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 Sumner's half-bemused, half-baffled songwriting and vocal delivery. Still, that's nothing compared to what New Order might be reduced to recycling.© John Bush /TiVo