- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Entertainment WeeklyA satisfying return to the Blue Monday sound of their heyday. [29 Apr 2005, p.147]
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Their best since Technique.
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This is pristine, state of the art, pop: the usual perfect combination of great melodies and swooping atmospherics that you can dance to.
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Under The RadarTheir most innovative and unified record since Technique. [#9]
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A very strong -- albeit front-loaded -- album.
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Alternative PressA fine distillation of everything New Order have been. [May 2005, p.176]
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When it's firing on all cylinders, Sirens' Call offers manic pop thrills that either recall the group's heyday, or slyly recalls the noise made by other people that were touched by New Order
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Unsurprisingly, the formula still works just fine, and in more than a couple spots, it’s revitalized and intensified to great effect.
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There is nothing here that pushes past what we expect from New Order in their current incarnation, but it is facile, shiny, bright and well-behaved around strangers.
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While great songs is something “Waiting For The Sirens’ Call” obviously lacks, it’s still a cracking New Order album - albeit one performed by a group all pushing 50 and mostly written about Bernard Sumner’s yacht.
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UncutIf nothing here is quite touched by the hand of God, then maybe it's all the more engagingly human. [Apr 2005, p.104]
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An extremely catchy collection of solidly crafted pop songs in the familiar New Order idiom.
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But even if it's only half as good as it used to be, this Call sounds okay to us.
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New Musical Express (NME)Touted as half 'Get Ready', half 'Technique', it lives up to every predictable stylistic retread that entails, to the point of self-parody.... Thank Christ, then, that the songs are so good. [26 Mar 2005, p.49]
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BlenderZigzags between immensely beautiful and crushingly ordinary with disorienting regularity. [May 2005, p.122]
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In the context of New Order's catalog, it may sink to the bottom, but listening to a great (or at least once-great) band phone it in can at least occasionally be rewarding enough to make the effort worthwhile.
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Unfortunately, however, the adjectives that need to be attached to this record -- workmanlike, customary, unembarrassing -- aren't going to make music fans flood the record stores seeking copies.
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Mellifluous, yet unenticing.
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Too much of the album passes by in a pleasantly inconsequential blur.
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Q MagazineA patchy affair. [Apr 2005, p.124]
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MojoThere's little real sense of progression here... and at times New Order sound dreary and ordinary. [May 2005, p.96]
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There's one smashing standout here, and that's the closing remix of "Guilt Is a Useless Emotion," a thumping, serpentine slice of pure New Order circa "Blue Monday," but even that can't save this grave "No."
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Maybe their edge was lost in the lukewarm production. Maybe it was lost in Barney’s lyrics, which are as utterly meaningless as they have been for years now. Maybe it was just lost altogether.
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For the life of me I cannot fathom how people can claim this album is any sort of return to form.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 34 out of 45
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Mixed: 6 out of 45
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Negative: 5 out of 45
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Jun 5, 2021I like the first six songs, but things do get a little too poppy, and gimmicky after that. The Song itself "Waiting for the Sirens Call" is amazing.
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DBJan 7, 2007loved it
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jyo_tirmayadSep 2, 2006