New Order “Waiting for the Sirens' Call”
It’s hard to just have fun. I guess some people are great at it -- just laughing and being in the moment and letting go. But, it seems to get harder with age. And, also, I don't know any of those people. How do they hold onto childhood that way? Are they on drugs? I’m embarrassed to admit that I find them to be suspicious -- if they actually exist at all. I didn’t read “All Joy No Fun,” Jennifer Senior’s book about the paradox of modern parenting, but the title and elevator pitch rang painfully true. I think that there is something about our modern condition -- urban, cerebral, distracted -- that plots “fun” somewhere between “elusive” and “impossible.” We’ve substituted that more naive and liberated sense with fleeting, high peak joys and dopamine hits and knowing laughter and appreciation. But fun is simpler than any of those things. At least, what I remember of it.
Nowadays, a lot of my fun is mediated by or projected upon my children. But, I’m not so old that I can’t remember times when I was a younger adult, unencumbered by pretense and open to the idea of play. A lot of my grown up fun probably occurred at concerts -- screaming at the top of my lungs when The Constantines came back out for an encore and covered AC/DC. Being buzzed on nothing more than the Arcade Fire playing “Funeral” in a tiny room in New York City in 2004. Dancing terribly, though unselfconsciously, in an empty loft while Chk Chk Chk (!!!) performed for an audience not much larger than the size of the band. Those were joyful experiences. But they were also fun.
When I reflect on each of those moments, here’s the thing I’ve often wonder: Were those bands having fun? Did they experience my fun in any way? Were they just doing their job? Were they excited or high but also mostly tired or miserable? Or something else? I’ve generally lived under the assumption that Rock and Roll is supposed to be fun. And maybe that’s true. But what about the bands. The artists. The human beings. Are they supposed to be having fun, too?
The more I considered the question, the less sure I was about the answer. For whatever reason, I started thinking about James Murphy and LCD Soundsystem. While a bunch of people roll their eyes at the DFA co-founder, many more move and dance and sing along and make out to their music, while also smirking at their cleverness and shaking their asses. I mean, fun...right? But when I listen to James Murphy in interviews, he sounds very serious and kind of tortured. It sounds like his job, when not performed on Molly, is a lot of work and not all that much fun. The National, like many writerly artists, seem to find joy in things that are existentially un-fun. U2 is literally zero fun. The Velvet Underground were almost definitely an awful hang. I thought that maybe Queen had fun but the more I learned about Freddie Mercury, the less sure I was. The Rolling Stones had unending pleasure but I don’t know if there’s evidence that much of it was fun. The Beach Boys sang ‘Fun Fun Fun’ but seemed completely trapped. The Stooges wrote an anthem called “No Fun.” And The Sex Pistols covered it. The Clash were too important for fun. And Morrissey would rather eat a steak than be forced to have fun. So, I think that that leaves The Beatles from 1960 to 1966. That’s the beginning and end of my list of famous, and also fun, bands.
But why is it so hard? Is it the anxiety of performance? The inevitable imposter syndrome that follows fame? Is it the hangover from the night/week/month/year/decade before? Is it the monotony of touring and recording that The Kinks described in “Do It Again”? Or maybe its the perverse dissonance of -- day after day -- being forced to elicit fun and to simulate fun when you and your audience are increasingly incapable of such an experience. That plight -- the tragedy of fun -- is part of what defines and unites Goths, I suppose. It’s also quite possibly the thesis of Post-Punk’s greatest band: New Order.
New Order deserved fun. They desperately and methodically hunted it. But, deep down, they knew they’d never find it. They’ve been Sisyphus for over forty years now, trying to conjure dance and romance from the grayness of Manchester and the shadow of suicide. They were unlike their Punk and Post-Punk relatives. They were not Post-Structural like The Au Pairs or Punk like Gang of Four, both of whom could sound like fun. At their frequent best, they were unlike most everything before them, but core to so much that would come after. For one thing, they imagined computers -- and therefore Dance Music -- as completely “Punk.” You didn’t need know how to play music to make music with a computer. Moreover, without New Order there’s no Goth or Britpop. House Music may never have crossed over. There’s no Chk Chk Chk (!!!). And there is absolutely, positively, no LCD Soundsystem.
Many bands have suffered gutting tragedies. Others have simply appeared doomed. Some like to fetishize death or horror. But New Order is really the only important band I know of that was born from death. Within a year of their formation, they were in New York, at the discoteques, listening to Italian beats, scouring every dimly lit corner for fun. Soon after, they opened The Haçienda, their own dance club, among the lifeless factories of Manchester, far from anything verdant. Several years later they would chase House Music and Ecstasy and bubbles to the beaches of Ibiza. All the while, they combined the sunny jangle of their guitars and the melodic thud of their bass with one hundred and thirty beats per second. While they could never forget the end of their former band, New Order was pathologically designed for fun. Whether their definition of fun was sincere or aesthetic or drug-addled is almost irrelevant. At a certain point, the simulation of fun becomes impossible to discern from the honest pursuit of it.
I came to New Order later in life. When Ian Curtis died, I was only six years old. When “Blue Monday” came out, I was nine. But when “The Perfect Kiss” and “Bizarre Love Triangle” came out, I was almost old enough. I heard those two singles, accidentally, on 92.7 WDRE, which was just a tick of the dial beyond 92.3, the Classic Rock station that I frequented. I remember discovering WDRE initially accidentally because they were playing Iggy Pop’s “Tall Cool One.” When the next song was something by Siouxsie and the Banshees, or possibly Bauhaus, I turned the dial away, in fear. But, I cautiously returned. And it was there — on 92.7 — and then — 1986 — that I was properly introduced to New Order.
There was a lot about WDRE, in general, and New Order, in particular, that I could not fathom. But I understood enough. For one thing, I began to understand more about the girls in the ninth grade who had black lipstick and buttons on their backpacks featuring words like “The Cure” and “Depeche Mode.” I also began to understand that there was something darker, and possibly deeper, when you dug beneath Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and kept digging, past Duran Duran. I couldn’t fully unpack what this New Order thing was. I knew nothing of Ian Curtis. I was ignorant when it came to House Music. I was still a year or so away from discovering The Clash and Talking Heads and The Ramones and The Velvet Underground. But, I made note of “Bizarre Love Triangle” -- mechanized drums and dark, thick bass against New Age synth swirl and too sunny, too dreamy vocals. I couldn’t entirely discern it from Depeche Mode or The Thompson Twins, for that matter. But I liked it. And then, a couple of years later, when Quincy Jones remixed and released “Blue Monday,” something clicked. That song. That was it. Ground zero for everything else. It was kind of Punk. And sort of Disco. And definitely Pop. And totally New Wave. It was also, like a lot of the Second British Invasion that began in 1982, a lot of fun.
The moment I realized who New Order were and how undeniable their music could be, I almost immediately turned away. Some of this was, no doubt, the darkness of Joy Division’s narrative. I was confused by the illogic of something so serious and horrific birthing something danceable and fun. Additionally, I was still plenty intimidated by those Goth girls. But, most of all, I’d just found my niche as a Hippie Punk, somewhere between Van Morrison’s “Astral Week” and Television’s “Marquee Moon.” I had my identity -- my costume — and I was sticking with it.
Over the years, as much as I admired New Order, I didn’t listen to them all that often. Even today, I own only one of their albums (“Brotherhood”) and otherwise stick with the singles or whatever deep cuts “the algorithms” serve me. I’m not exactly sure what my problem is. Maybe I was afraid that if I got in too deep it would be either too much fun or too grotesque or too heavy or even too light. The reality, of course, was none of those things. It took me a good deal of exposure therapy, undeniable word of mouth and a lot of James Murphy to finally realize that New Order was unquestionably the most important Rock band that I intentionally avoided. They were the through line between the Punk bands that I loved (Wire, The Au Pairs) the New Wave that I never took seriously enough (The Human League, Depeche Mode) and the Britpop partially defined my young adulthood (The Smiths, Blur, Happy Mondays, The Charlatans). More than their influence, however, was their significance. New Order was the answer to the question I had been wondering about: Is making music fun?
When they first set out as New Order, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert appeared unified in their answer to that particular question. Music was fun. It absolutely had to be. After Joy Division, what other answer could there be? And so, they traded Ian’s deep, flat vocals for Bernard’s sunny, fey tone. The angles of the guitars were smoothed out until what was left was mostly jangle and strum. Hooky’s bass bounced a bit more than it thudded. And Phil’s drums were doubled and then tripled and then revved up to the speed of House. Their version of fun may have been Northern English and slightly gothic and unfamiliar at the time, but it was fun, goddammit. Their singles moved up the charts in Europe and into the clubs in the U.S. Their success funded The Haçienda and most everything else that Factory Records produced -- from the elaborate album packaging to A Certain Ratio to The Durutti Column to O.M.D. Anyone who has seen “Twenty Four Hour Party People” knows that all of it -- New Order, Factory Records, The Haçienda, the drink and the drugs -- was tremendous fun and a complete disaster waiting to happen.
When the fun stopped is not exactly clear, but most people point to 1993 and the making of “Republic.” Factory Records was going under. The Hacienda was going under. Bernard had just started another band on the side with Johnny Marr and Peter Hook was apparently not in the best frame of mind. Though Sumner and Hook were not on good terms and though the acute financial stressors could not have helped matters, “Republic,” unsurprisingly, was still quite good. Critics admired it. Radio stations welcomed the singles. And clubs lapped up the remixes. But Bernard Sumner was done. While Hooky was geared up for another world tour, Sumner agreed only to a dozen or so shows. And that was it. Stephen and Gillian stayed married. But Bernard and Hooky got their divorce. The fun -- if it was ever there to begin with -- was over.
Over the next five years, New Order sowed their oats. Sumner and Marr continued as Electronic. Hooky played bass in several less memorable bands and Stephen and Gillian released a couple of dance records and scored films. But, with wounds licked and healed, the quartet reunited in 1998 and enjoyed a much deserved honeymoon culminating with the release “Get Ready,” an album celebrated by fans, critics and, perhaps most importantly, New Order themselves. Several years later, the group was canonized in the aforementioned Michael Winterbottom film, “24 Hour Party People,” which depicted the birth of Factory Records and Britpop. However, just a s a wave of nostalgia prepared to coronate the band, tensions between Sumner and Hook resurfaced. Somewhere during the long and painful birthing of “Waiting for the Siren’s Call” it became clear that a second honeymoon was not possible. The album, which eventually arrived in 2005, is the product of early divorce proceedings. If “Republic” caused a painful, trial separation, the aftermath of “Waiting for the Sirens' Call” had the feel of permanence.
In spite of its origin story, though, “Sirens’ Call” is a highly serviceable, always professional New Order album. Their tricks had not yet dried up. Sumner’s hooks still rang true whenever they needed to. And his guitar solos (if you can call them that) are surprisingly forward and novel. Hooky’s bass, though less athletic here, is still identifiable. And the beats, courtesy of Stephen and Bernard and rookie, Phil Cunningham (who joined during Gillian Gilbert’s sabbatical), rarely sound dated. In fact, though there are many allusions to loves ruined and mistakes made, there’s no evident loss of faculty on “Sirens’ Call.” It’s thoroughly a fine New Order album, though perhaps easier to digest and dismiss than their iconic work.
Much of the album’s cogency has to be credited to Sumner, whose melodies and feathery vocals separated the band from both Britpop and the aging, English House Music of The Pet Shop Boys. Over time, it had become clear that Bernard was the introverted, measured brains of the operation while Hooky was the good times muscle. And though the odd couple had increasingly succeeded because of their differences, it is Sumner's delicate touch which ensures that “Sirens’ Call” has a high floor. Inversely, that finesse also cuts the darkness and weirdness that elevated New Order to greater heights.
Two songs into the album, there are no real surprises. “Who’s Joe,” a buoyant, perfectly adequate retelling of “Hey Joe,” is charming in the way late 90s Alternative Rock could be. "Hey Now What You Doing,” which follows, has more angles to it and more pluck in the bass. But neither have clubby beats or shards of Punk. The former is actually closer to The Gin Blossoms than Blur, whereas the latter resembles The Charlatans. No offense intended in either case. But also, not much surprise or delight or...fun.
The title track, which comes next, is the first (and perhaps only) undeniable banger on the record. The beat is bigger, the guitar hook is steady and syncopated and the synth has some French Disco in it. Had Stereolab been older, more English and damaged in 2005, they might’ve made something that sounded like this. While the rest of the record fails to match the standard of the title track, “Krafty,” the album’s first single, tries its best. With a wonderfully cheap beat borrowed from the early DFA closet (who recycled it from the Factory Records closet) and a memorable bass line, the single throws everything on top of its able bottom. There’s disaffected vocals about nothing at all, call and response between Bernard and a backup singer, a xylophone, an actual guitar solo and a bunch of other ideas that stick to the bass. The chorus is so good, however, that when the verses show up, they pale in comparison. The beat and the craft manage to hold things together, but whereas the title track is a complete song, “Krafty” is more like 60% killer and 40% filler.
Much of “Waiting for the Sirens' Call” stays down the middle, which is to say somewhat predictable but almost never boring. There is certainly range across the tracks, but Sumner’s voice is limited and the tempos really only range from upbeat to somewhat fast. “I Told You So” is a solid deep cut -- part Human League, part “Safety Dance” and part Air (all of which were made possible by New Order). “Dracula’s Castle” is basically “Sister Ray,” with a programmed beat and some Moogish flair. Like many songs on the album, the track is probably better than the vocal performance. It’s not that Sumner has lost any particular skill or quality. He was always more of a stylist -- airy and consistent -- than he was a singer. However, a major part of his appeal relied on the contrast between his lightness and the heaviness of the band’s bass and drums. With Hooky mixed middle and the beats generally slower and slighter than House, the vocals come off attenuated rather than artful or disaffected.
The album’s back half features two more singles: “Jetstream” is a semi-sweet, semi-disposable spell-along (J-E-T) distinguished almost exclusively by the appearance of Ana Matronic of The Scissor Sisters. Fortunately, it’s followed by "Guilt Is a Useless Emotion,” a club hit with half a dose of acid. While it’s not my cup of tea and I won’t defend the sentiment, I completely admire the craft and understand why consenting grown ups who like House Music would love it.
“Waiting for the Sirens’ Call” ends with a duo of outliers. “Turn” is a Goth Rock throwback, very reminiscent of Echo and The Bunnymen. Hooky’s bass is supple and the guitar strum is more ominous. It is, by a good distance, the most hopeless track on the album. Unhampered by the pretense of romance or fun, Sumner sounds more present, like there’s actual blood flowing through his actual veins while he actually sings:
It's a wild world out there
And nobody gives a damn
In cold blood we don't care
And we don't want to understand
I'm sitting here alone at night
My sleepless eyes are open wide
What do you want me to say
What we had has gone away
There’s no obvious programming or trickery. It’s just a sad, lovely song. And it would have served as a perfect coda for Sumner and Hooks second honeymoon — except they tacked on “Working Overtime,” a delightful and unexpected throwaway to close the album. With just unvarnished electric guitar, honest to goodness drums and a single piano note, New Order race through a heavy R&B number that recalls The Beatles, The Stooges and Oasis. It bears very little relation to anything the band made before or since. It has more in common with the careless brilliance of The Stones “Starfucker” or the casual skank of LCD’s “Yr Cities a Sucker” than it does with Post-Punk or New Wave or House Music. It’s tonally unlike the rest of “Sirens’ Call,” but I’m very happy that it exists. It doesn’t necessarily sound like “fun,” but it’s in the same hemisphere.
After the album made its way around the world, New Order fell apart again. And this time the recovery was slower, more painful and ultimately incomplete. Sumner, for virtue or for spite, resisted the urge to tour. Meanwhile, Hooky, who desperately wanted to be out on the road again, fell into a bottle and blamed his bandmate for it. The two traded insults in the press and, by 2007, Peter Hook was no longer a member of New Order. Unsurprisingly, Sumner, Morris and Gilbert decided to continue on as New Order. Astonishingly, however, they formed a new operating entity, licensed the name “New Order” from the old one, and allotted Peter Hook less than 2% of his former band’s income.
It was a bloodless move -- petty and vindictive, though possibly justifiable. Hook sued and the band settled. Matters were resolved, but not amicably. In the years that followed, Sumner and Hook wrote dueling memoirs. But, even a decade later, the two were still estranged. Today, Hooky is sober, charming and reflective in his seventh decade, clearly open to the idea of a rapprochement. Sumner, however, remains highly contained, to the point of being closed off, as he guides both New Order’s future and their legacy. The men share a certain pride of ownership for the two iconic bands they co-founded, but nothing more. Whatever flicker of fun that was reignited during “Get Ready” was snuffed out by the “Sirens’ Call.” Like most New Order albums, their eighth was consistently very good and occasionally much more. But, given its context and fate, and unlike its predecessors, it was not made in pursuit of fun. In fact, it was produced with the middle-aged guile and pragmatism that are the enemies of fun.