Music Complete is New Order’s first album in a decade. 2005’s Waiting For The Sirens' Call was a largely forgettable affair and seemed for a long while as if it might make a rather pitiful swansong for the band.

It’s the first recording since the acrimonious split with bassist Peter Hook. Bernard Sumner’s Bad Lieutenant cohort Tom Chapman fills Hook’s shoes here. He has been touring with New Order for years and his playing fits in well with the rest of the group. More welcome to long-time fans will be the return of original keyboardist Gillian Gilbert. Her stoic appearance belies the dynamism and energy that her musical contribution brings to the overall sound.

The Mondrianesque cover of Music Complete comes from Peter Saville, whose memorable sleeve designs have graced New Order albums since Day One. The return of familiar names is balanced by contributions from outsiders. La Roux’s Elly Jackson sings on three of the songs. Brandon Flowers and Iggy Pop appear and production duties on a number of tracks have been shared with The Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands and Richard X.

The album opens with current single, ‘Restless’, a song that acts as a reintroduction for the band after such a long absence. It is the most New Order-y song on the album and works as a bridge between the previous records and what is to come.

‘Singularity’ is the first of two songs produced by Tom Rowlands, and it sounds like it. It has the big beats and rollicking bassline that we have come to expect from him, and is not a million miles away from the work he did on Primal Scream’s XTRMNTR. The Chemical Brothers and their contemporaries, Leftfield, are big influences on both this track and ‘Plastic’.

‘Plastic’ is helmed by Richard X and features Elly Jackson sharing vocals with Sumner. It’s a strong start to the album but after the uplifting opening triptych, ‘Tutti Frutti’ is the first dud. It’s not a particularly bad tune, just not very interesting despite Jackson’s best efforts. Her next contribution is to a much better song. ‘People On The High Line’ blends funk rhythms with house-style piano leads, and is a cracker of a tune.

On ‘Stray Dog’, Iggy Pop does his best Tom Waits impression, evoking an aged and decrepit iteration of the character he played on Death In Vegas’ '90s classic, 'Aisha'. Iggy has previously performed live with New Order. In Sumner’s recent autobiography he said it was a dream come true for the band, to whom The Stooges were idols and a major inspiration when forming Joy Division.

There’s a slight dip in quality on the second half of the album although ‘Nothing But A Fool’ is possibly the closest thing to a new Joy Division track that you’ll ever hear.  Tom Rowlands returns to ramp things up again on ‘Unlearn This Hatred’ before Brandon Flowers takes over lead vocals on closing number ‘Superheated’. If working with Iggy Pop is a dream come true for New Order, then this must be a similar feeling for Flowers. His band, The Killers, are named after a fictitious group that appear in the video for ‘Crystal’.

Flowers' appearance probably means that this song will be a single from Music Complete but while it is a good song in its own right, it is not representative of the album as a whole. The best parts of the album are the hard dance tunes. This is probably the best thing New Order have done since their '80s heyday. Rather than being retro or some kind of retread, this is the up-to–date sound of a 21st century electronic band. New Order influenced a generation, then took influence from their protégés to give us something new. Music Complete; circle complete.

Music Complete is available from amazon & iTunes.

Hot on the heels of his Joy Division exhibition at Proud Camden in 2012, Kevin Cummins - rock photographer, music mag photo stalwart, documentarian of UK bands for forty years - returns with a strange and interesting look at New Order. 

New Order were a Factory band comprised of former Joy Division members, formed in the grief and fog after the death of Ian Curtis. The exhibition is dedicated to various points in the eighties, nineties and two-thousands, but the focal point is New Order in America, post-'Blue Monday', enjoying international acclaim. New Order in America were the strange, English ‘other’ band, and spent a long period in ‘83 touring around the States - more specifically, New York. 

In the middle of the exhibition is a photo of Bernard Sumner standing on a training pitch in an estate in front of John Barnes. Sumner looks grumpy. Barnes looks confused. There is a can of Stella on the floor. This photo represents the incongruity of Cummins’ best work, work that is typically English. The black and white New York stage shots of Peter Hook in leather trousers, bass slung low while playing a gig are greatest-hits-album-insert gold, but visually they aren’t nearly as interesting as when Cummins is setting the scene outside of a normal magazine photo shoot. He is at his best when he is photographing a band on a stage other than a live one - he is a masterful director when setting the band in a context less traditional than NME live pictures.

In the exhibition, photos of perennially sunglassed-Bernard Sumner looking grumpy in America are juxtaposed with photos of Bernard Sumner looking grumpy on stage. But although the onstage photos are (ironically) less staged, strangely they are less about the band than the posed ones. Visually, what is most interesting about New Order are the shots taken in the gaps between their performances: Gillian Gilbert wreathed in shadows; Sumner looking grumpy with an American number plate;Peter Hook bisected by shadows, lighting a fag, eyes to the floor; a tetraptych of the four band members basking by a pool in LA sunlight in 1983 during the height of their fame. Those sunbathing Kodak borders of C-type pictures epitomise New Order in the middle of something unreal: they look like they've wandered in from a Brett Easton Ellis novel.

The exhibition (in the middle of Camden market - prepare to walk through enthusiastic tourists and Noel Fielding fanboys to get there) is a view of Cummins’ transition, or perhaps evolution, through the ages. Between 1983 and the reformation of New Order in 2011, Kevin Cummins took staged photos of a Mancunian band not at home and bathing in America after 'Blue Monday' came out and a US tour beckoned. And these gelatin silver photos belie a band in the middle of a strange dream. Cummins’ exhibition is not Madchester, it’s not the Hacienda, it’s a band out of context. I would highly recommend you go and see it immediately.

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©Kevin Cummins

Catch the exhibition, New Order by Kevin Cummins, at Proud Camden (23rd April - 7th June 2015). You can find out more at www.proud.co.uk