New Order - Music Complete

They come towards the end of the first half of the album and you're not prepared for their sheer excellence: Tutti Frutti and People On The High Line are simply dance New Order at their best. It's a bit like having Blue Monday followed straight by The Perfect Kiss. Tutti Frutti is great disco, introduced by a sampled Italian voice recalling Fine Time, then comes a wonderful melancholic keyboard and Bernard Sumner entering with a beautifully unusual soft voice: "Life is so crazy these days, I don't know how to adjust". Well, it seems you adjust pretty well, mate. You have just replaced Depeche Mode at Mute Records, that and the fact Peter Hook left and brought all the tensions with him apparently helped. Tom Chapman is a pretty adequate replacement, and you can hear it in the following masterpiece, People On The High Line, a funky house monster tune enhanced by a delightful Krafterkish keyboard in the long instrumental ride. Welcome back Gillian Gilbert, anyone who has seen a live video of the last few years knows she's on top form and also knows the wonderful synergy between Chapman and guitarist Phil Cunningham who has remained after he joined the band in 2001 to temporarily replace her. Behind them Steve Morris, a human drum machine as ever. This amazing band sustains a Bernard Sumner in state of grace, which in these two songs finds a perfect duet with Elly Jackson of La Roux.
This is obviously the best New Order album since Technique, and the all favourable reviews also compare Music Complete (which entered the UK chart at number 2 straight after Disclosure) to that album in finding a perfect balance between powerful electronic tracks and inspired pop rock songs. I don't really think they made any mediocre album since then. Republic had its own great songs, as did the inspired comeback Get Ready. Waiting For The Sirens' Call might have had the wrong singles, but had enough great album tracks like the massively underrated and adventurous I Told You So, based on reggaeton way before it became so popular.
It's not even the fact all these albums might have had a couple of weak tracks, because Nothing But A Fool and Unlearn This Hatred are, for me, the weak tracks of this album (by New Order's stellar standards, of course). The first a guitar number with a nice verse sitting flat on a chorus taken straight from an Electronic B side, it might appeal to the Joy Division die hard fans as it somehow sounds like it would be great sung by Ian Curtis. The other starts promising with a hard techno attack but also has a slightly disappointing chorus. Songs which would have sounded fantastic on the (still very good) Bad Lieutenant album but which are odd fillers on an extraordinarily vibrant album like Music Complete, (effectively illustrated by the excellent artwork directed by Peter Saville and designed by Paul Herrington).
What an appropriate title it is, the album browses all the styles which New Order touched in their unique history, and this is apparent in Singularity, a song starting like Joy Division and then mounting a wild electro tune in the vein of The Chemical Brothers starring Bernard Sumner's Out Of Control on the drums of Transmission. Tom Rowlands co-writing the track might have something to do with it. "Winter came so soon, and sumner never happened" is another of those fantastic Sumner's vocal starts.
Maybe Plastic says what's really great about this album, it's basically New Order's version of Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's I Feel Love and it goes so close to be a kitch fiasco, but it's in fact an electro jewel enhanced from the backing vocals by Elly Jackson, Dawn Zee and Denise Johnson. New Order, at their age, are not scared by playing on the often thin verge between crap and brilliant. The single Restless tells much about this, a song sounding utterly boring at first revealing layers of excellence with each listen. There's a great bass, a fantastic guitar sounding like Johnny Marr and the chorus "I feel so restless, and in this changing world I am lost for words", which sounded so uninspired, is now so inspired in fact! What can you say other than "typical Bernard Sumner"?! Not an instant hit like Tutti Frutti can be, but still one of their best songs of the last 25 years.
The legendary Iggy Pop humbly guests with his spoken word on Stray Dog, a melancholic number the mood of which somehow makes me think about Elegia that has the function of interval between the sparkling energy of People On The High Line and the dark rock of Academic which boasts one of the best choruses of the album: "'cause your heart is cold and your blood runs dry, you'll never see or hear the crashing of the sea, the tempest rise, it stops all time, when lovers eyes are locked in harmony". The Game has another brilliant chorus, beautiful guitar and bass surrounding an extremely inspired Bernard singing "it's so clear, but we can't see it", a chorus made even more epic by the Manchester Camerata strings.
Superheated sounds like Bernard Sumner guesting on a track of The Killers, and not the opposite, which is Brandon Flowers guesting on a New Order track. The result is oddly a nice Pet Shop Boys track, though not the best way to wrap up the album, just like I wouldn't have opened with Restless.
So, weird tracklist, and I basically never listen to the album in that order, but I really adore the most of the tracks here and they just make unbelievable Bernard Sumner will be 60 years old in three months. With gems like Singularity, Plastic, Tutti Frutti, People On The High Line, Academic and The Game, this sounds like the album which should have followed Technique, but in this contemporary age, filling effortlessly 25 years of gap.