New Order's first album since Republic in 1993 or so is a polished one. No expense was spared with the production, as is evident in the layers of guitars, electronics and throaty backup vocals, and a number of 1990s big-names, including Billy Corgan (of heroin-withdrawal-pop idols Smashing Pumpkins) and Bobby Gillespie (of Primal Scream), have been recruited to take part. The direction of the album is a lot more rock and guitar-based than earlier New Order, with the flirtations with drugmusic and electronica reduced to subtle references (although "Someone Like You" does come across as somewhat clubby, especially in the almost two minutes before the vocals kick in, and the drum loop of "Slow Jam" does evoke the rocktronica experimentations of the likes of Chemical Brothers). There's even cryptic, wordless Peter Saville artwork (this time a photo of a woman in baggy jeans holding a video camera, with a coloured rectangle across the image). All in all, it is obvious that AOL Time Warner, New Order's employers for this project, have sunk a great deal of money into this latest offering from the established band/brand.

Unfortunately, despite all this, New Order do come across as a tired band. It is obvious that they don't enjoy making music as they once did, and this album is for the most part workmanly, crowd-pleasing New Orderisms. You have the indieish guitars, Peter Hook's trademark basslines and Bernard Sumner's nonchalant voice that immediately mark this out as New Order, and the start of "Primitive Notion" evokes Joy Division, circa Closer. The songs, however, are rather formulaic, with the most irritatingly obvious rhymes and bland, post-Prozac lyrics that mean little and aren't even intriguingly cryptic (some examples: "I want to scream, I want to shout, I want to know, what it's all about", "What can I do, I feel like I'm on fire, if you only knew, you're the object of desire", "in the dead of night it will be alright, cause I'll be there for you when you want me to"); there is nothing of the calibre of Blue Monday or Bizarre Love Triangle here. In some ways, it sounds like any recent Electronic album, and we all know how forgettable those were. (Proof: without looking, name 3 tracks off the last Electronic album. Bet you can't do it.)

If you're a sworn New Order completist, or want something that sounds New Orderish to play in the background in your office/shop/moderately cool café you could do a lot worse; at least until someone develops a Random New Order Generator. If not, get one of their earlier albums instead (I would recommend Power, Corruption and Lies, or the Substance compilation, as a starting point).