New Order – Music Complete

Album Review by Katie Hawthorne | 17 Sep 2015
Album title: Music Complete
Artist: New Order
Label: Mute
Release date: 25 Sep

For those unconvinced by Music Complete's safe lead single Restless; fear not. The spiralling dance-pop musing on consumer culture sounds robust and expansive as a scene-setting album opener, but it's swiftly overshadowed. New Order – ft. a returned Gillian Gilbert and definitely no Peter Hook – come out synths blazing on Singularity, a track produced by Chemical Bro Tom Rowlands which slinks from the shadows and storms with a one-two punch toward a spine-tingiing breakdown of flattened, thumping bass.

And, just when you think you've got this tenth record pegged, Tutti Frutti's heated, sticky inflections provide a double-take. With Elly Jackson of La Roux on chorus duties, and the Manchester Camerata on strings, prepare for a euphoric, Euro-inspired night on the tiles. Brandon Flowers (The Killers) performs his best Sumner impression on Superheated, lacklustre in comparison with swollen, eerie mid-album gem Stray Dog: a brooding, existential lecture from Iggy Pop.

They dip back into strumming territory for tracks like Academic, but it's on the hard-hitting house-spiked numbers that they really show their royalty to the dancefloor. Unlearn This Heartache stuffs you into the underbelly of electronica, a harsh, apocalyptical soundscape that only this band could make blindly danceable. All hail.

Playing Glasgow O2 Academy on 19 Nov and Manchester Warehouse Project on 5-6 Dec http://www.neworder.com