Consumer Guide Album

New Order: Get Ready [Reprise, 2001]
Obviously it's not perky enough, funky enough either, but their best (and third) album in 15 years (and probably last ever) sounds an awful lot like what kids today call pop. Electronic aura, hooks up front, Bernard Albrecht as boyish as Damon Albarn if not an actual young person, and generalized lyrics affirming a pre-9/11 reality. Give "Crystal" or the attempted Billy Corgan comeback "Turn My Way" a host of video cuties and innocents will think the mysterioso raveups are a new species of fun. Which in the better world we all deserve they'd deserve to be. A-