New Order – Waiting For The Sirens’ Call album review

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Everyone is falling over themselves to figure out how Peter Hook gets *that* bass sound, and how Bernard Sumner manages to make generally terrible lyrics sound meaningful. That Hooky, Barney and drummer/programmer Stephen Morris have been doing this for longer than half of their current fanbase has existed, might have some bearing on New Order’s current status as the U2 it’s not embarrassing to like. Waiting For The Sirens’ Call sounds precisely how you’d expect a 2005 New Order album produced by John Leckie, Stuart “Les Rythmes Digitales” Price and Stephen Street to sound: naggingly catchy, irresistibly danceable and as comfortably familiar as your favourite childhood T-shirt. New single ‘Krafty’ and album closer ‘Working Overtime’ are the killers, with ‘Jetstream’ (featuring one Ana Matronic) taking the bronze. Grand.

Charlie Ivens

Basement Jaxx – The Singles album review

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What a rush! Just under an hour of unabashed party music sticks a timely full-stop (or perhaps just a semi-colon – I don’t think they’re going anywhere) after six years of genre-bashing bassquake beats for Basement Jaxx. The two South Londoners have blossomed from house-oriented underground party-throwers into an impressively eclectic monster, unafraid of using pop immediacy to sneak excitable, fresh noises into the mainstream. This party set kicks off with the storming ‘Red Alert’ and takes in everything from splendid discoid new single ‘Oh My Gosh’ to ‘Where’s Your Head At?’ and the raucous ‘Plug It In’ along the way. And let’s not forget that ‘Lucky Star’ (the Dizzee Rascal one) is more punk-rock than anything else on this page. Ubiquity has done Basement Jaxx no harm at all.

Charlie Ivens

The Scott 4 Free Rock Orchestra – E-S-P album review

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Scott 4 made a bizarre but affecting hybrid of Krautrock and country. Now Stetson-clad frontman Scott Blixen has decided the world needs an album of eccentric p-funk drawing a squiggly line between Grace Jones, Trevor Jackson’s Playgroup and, umm, watery 1970s prog. It’s unconvincing but occasionally amusing, not least on ‘Indie’, wherein Blixen rhymes “Slowdive” with “Ben Folds Five” and “Kingmaker” with “Kula Shaker”. Only he knows why.

Charlie Ivens