Phil Cunningham, rookie guitarist for New Order, had this to say about working with his childhood heroes on Waiting for the Sirens’ Call: “Sometimes they reject stuff because it sounds ‘too New Order-y.'” If that were truly the case, Sirens’ Call would be nine minutes long. And those entire nine minutes would comprise the dancehall-accented “I Told You So” and the Iggy-aping “Working Overtime” (the album’s only tracks that could be called even vaguely surprising). The rest of it? Plodding, pedestrian New Order, fresh out of the freezer — chrome-edged melodicism, wistful warble and all. Granted, warmed-over New Order is still better than most of today’s crop of disco-punk clones. But the group ceased being comparable to anything else long ago. A quarter-century in, New Order isn’t a band or even a franchise; it’s become its own genre, less timeless than stuck in time, about as kinetic and lifelike as a stuffed and mounted museum exhibit. And coming from an outfit that once pulsed with vitality, Sirens’ Call is actually not very New Order-y at all.
