New Order — Archive — T. Cole Rachel

Whenever a band as iconic and deeply influential as New Order decides to release a new album, it’s cause for both celebration and concern. For longtime fans (like myself), it’s exciting when a group that has profoundly shaped your musical life for the past 35 or so years decides to put something new into the world, but it’s also slightly worrisome. For those of us who have had our hopes dashed by the diminishing returns of late-career albums by the likes of Depeche Mode and the Cure — two of New Order’s very few contemporaries who are still making music — we approach the forthcoming ninth New Order LP (their first in a decade) with the overwhelming feeling of “Yes!” followed by a healthy amount of “Please, please, please don’t let this suck.” Judging from the release of “Restless” — the slick first single from Music Complete — we need not worry too much. According to frontman Bernard Sumner, the new record seeks to embrace the best of New Order’s vast history: a dance record that neatly splits the difference between guitars and synthesizers. While the band’s classic lineup has shifted since recording 2005’s Waiting For The Siren’s Call (bassist Peter Hook is out, original keyboardist and vocalist Gillian Gilbert is back in), and they enlisted a variety of friends to guest on the record (Iggy Pop, Brandon Flowers, La Roux’s Elly Jackson), there is still a very palpable feeling that Music Complete has been constructed with the notion of making a classic New Order record, something along the lines of Technique. (They even brought back design legend Peter Saville to orchestrate the packaging.) While it remains to be seen if the record can live up to all of these promises, it’s an exhilarating prospect just the same. At a time when so much popular music can be traced directly back to the roots of New Order and Joy Division, it’s cool to see those very same musicians — more than three decades later — still turning up to show everyone how it’s done.