The year in review will start today!
DON'T CALL THEM COMEBACKS. One of the best things about New Order's latest, "Get Ready", or almost any New Order album for that matter, is how much it sounds like New Order. This New Order album kicks off with the single "Crystal", which begins with a delayed intro of keyboards and soaring female vocals. Then, the beat kicks in, and within ten seconds of that happening, you hear the completely unmistakeable guitar playing which can only belong in a New Order song. In this way, New Order are a lot like Aphex Twin, in the sense that anyone who's ever been a fan of New Order can hear a new New Order song and know before now that it's a new New Order song, even if they've never heard the song, because it's part of the magic of New Order that everything they do sounds so much like New Order, which isn't to say that all New Orders' stuff sounds the same, because that's certainly not true, since New Order have been one of the most fearlessly original bands in the post-punk era. New Order's are just one of those artists that you can immediately recognize as themselves (and Barney from New Order's aforementioned guitar playing just screams "New Order!", it's as distinctive to the New Order mystique as Hooky from New Order's more vaunted bass playing). The funny thing is how New Order sound more like New Order as they age. For instance, "Technique", their most original album, kicks off with "Fine Time", which at the time, sounded nothing like New Order, until you got a few minutes into it, at which time Hooky's New Order bass playing came to the forefront and you could breathe a sigh of relief and say "Ahh, now THIS sounds like New Order" and then further relax as that unmistakeable New Order guitar playing breaks open the second track, "All the Way". On the other hand, when New Order's 1993 album "Republic" (which was looking to be the last New Order album, much more so than all the other times when it looked like there wouldn't be any more New Order albums) was released, I'd also recently bought New Order's 1983 album "Power, Corruption, and Lies", and I would play tricks on friends by playing "Leave Me Alone" and those in the know would immediately ask "Is this New Order?", and I would say "Yes, it is New Order, but it's from 1983" and they'd say, "No way, it sounds exactly like New Order", and I knew that they meant it sounded so much like 1993 New Order, even though it was 1983 New Order. Similarly, with "Get Ready", New Order have made "Brotherhood Part II" just like New Order made "Power, Corruption and Lies Part II" with "Republic". That is, the latter two albums displayed New Order's dance-y tendencies embedded those records' rather dour overall mood, while the former two are extremely guitar heavy, collectively comprising New Order's most rocking statements to date.
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The new Curve album, "Gift", can't be considered a comeback record. For one thing, they never really left the music business. In 1994, they announced they'd be taking a "hiatus" and repeatedly stressed that Curve were not breaking up, but basically everyone ignored that and considered the band to be broken up for the next five years. Well gosh, Debbie Smith went off and joined Echobelly, and goodness knows when your guitarist runs off to join a legendarily successful and groundbreaking band like Echobelly then you'd better just call it quits [note: that was sarcasm]. Anyway, if Curve had a comeback album, then it was certainly 1999's "Come Clean", which had them plunging headlong into the electronica boom and making an album laced with thundering neo-industrial beat. In other words, it sounded nothing like the Curve we'd ever known, even though the actual results were patchily successful. At the time, I likened it to Sonic Youth's "A Thousand Leaves". Both bands engaged in new (for them) musical textures, which seemed the result of skimming ideas from the bands that in turn had been influenced by them many years earlier.
"Gift" is a return to Curve's classic sound of 1992-3. It still sounds remarkably contemporary, in no small part due to Garbage, Republica, et al having made careers out of ripping off Curve and helping to preserve their memory in the process. Like other Curve albums, there is some unnevenness in the material, as usual, the high points are truly remarkable. "Perish" may be the best thing they've ever done. And I'm not just saying that because Kevin Shields plays guitar on it.
No really, I'm not.
Stop looking at me like that.
