Single-less for ten years…
[Video][Website]
[5.33]
Thomas Inskeep: How cheeky that on their first post-Peter Hook single, New Order turn up the bass as if to taunt their former bassist. If only it were part of a more interesting song, instead of New Order paint-by-numbers. I feel restless too, because I’d rather listen to something better.
[4]
Madeleine Lee: “Age of Consent” is one of my three “if you could only listen to one song for the rest of your life” songs, so my feelings toward “Restless,” another riff-driven song that circles around itself with the primal logic of a dog circling around itself, were positive from the first listen. Of course, the mood is different; where 32 years ago, “Age of Consent” turned feelings of disappointment into yelps and clattering dance drums, “Restless” just sounds weary and bitter — like “The intro is also used in an AT&T wireless commercial” bitter. (At least the “fiscal climate isn’t looking good”/”running rivers full of blood” rhyme that the Internet tells me was once there has disappeared; “how much do you need” is already as naked an accusation, but less clumsy with it.)
[8]
Alfred Soto: When New Order released “Crystal” in 2000 and “Krafty” in 2005, the singles had the formidable blankness of the band’s best music. Shorn of their most recognizable element, the boys and Gillian Gilbert mix Bernard Sumner low in the mix, as if in penance. The results are middling. The star: Steve Morris’ drumming.
[4]
Ramzi Awn: It may not be an entirely new order, but it is surprising, and I am restless.
[6]
Brad Shoup: Instead of punning on the song title, punning on the band name, riffing on the name “Bernard Somnambulant,” or drawing unfavorable comparisons to Pet Shop Boys, I’ll just say this bored the hell out of me and then basically do all of the above.
[2]
Patrick St. Michel: I really thought I would never get this way — I’ve always believed I could be the eternally optimistic person who isn’t like all those olds, who moves along with progress and refuses to complain about it. That did not work out, and now I’m the type of person who gets blindsided by a New Order song. It’s relatively straightforward but one where simplicity makes the emotion hit all the harder (one of New Order’s best attributes). It’s a song about the “changing world,” but primarily about the feeling of alienation and exhaustion an individual feels caught up in it all with a healthy dose of disillusion with capitalism mixed in. It never bemoans any of this, either — no get-off-my-lawnisms here — but just captures the suffocating feeling of growing older while the world moves in a different direction from you.
[8]