Get Ready [Import]

New Order: Bernard Sumner (vocals, guitar); Peter Hook (vocals, bass); Gillian Gilbert (keyboards, synthesizer); Stephen Morris (drums, background vocals). Additional personnel includes: Billy Corgan, Bobby Gillespie (vocals); Andrew Innis (guitar); Dawn Zee (background vocals); Primal Scream. Producers: Bruno Ellingham, Andrew Robinson. Between 1993 and 2001, despite numerous "new" musical styles, the only things to emerge from the New Order camp were remixes and rumors--of beak-ups, breakdowns, and the like. The arrival of GET READY in 2001, the band's first album of new material since REPUBLIC, shows a band clearly still interested in doing things on its own terms. When Peter Hook's bass kicks in around the two-minute mark of the lead track "Crystal," it is like a dose of pure oxygen--THIS is New Order. The trio of guitar-based rockers, "Primitive Notion," "Slow Jam," and "Rock the Shack," all further the point--these are songs that no other band could have recorded (though the latter does include guest appearances by members of Primal Scream). For fans of the band's LOW-LIFE period, look no further than "Turn My Way" and "Run Wild," both of which take that album's confessional lyrics and gentle musical swagger and update them for the new millennium.