So here I am, frantically pouring over the booklet for the latest New Order album, searching in vain for details. Like McFly in Back To The Future I want answers damn you and make it sharpish! Publication date 2005?

It doesn't make any sense.

The songs that make up Waiting For The Sirens' Call sound oddly familiar, like I had heard them somewhere before. With no clear answers forthcoming from said booklet (apart from some stock images that seem to be lifted from the insides of new picture frames that you buy at the 99 cent store) I have imagined what the scenario was at New Order HQ last year. Allow me to put it in the form of a play:

Peter Hook is sitting in the studio, desperately coming up with a brand new bass line. Enter Bernard Sumner looking frazzled with a disc in his hand.

Hook: What's up Bernard?

Sumner: (sounding exasperated) It's this disc from those upstarts The Killers. Their album sounds pretty much like what we had in mind!

Hook: You think that's bad, I just heard the new one from the Manics. It's vintage 80s New Order the bastards.

Sumner: What are we going to do? We told the press that we going back to our old style.

Hook thinks about it for a second.

Hook: Fuck it, I really can't be bothered with it anymore. Let's just hand in the songs that didn't make the cut from our last record, nobody will notice a thing.

Sumner: Brilliant! Now off to our island in Greece that we paid for with the profits from 'Blue Monday' before the critics come knocking at our door.

Problem solved. If you already own 2001s 'Get Ready', then don't invest in this poor rehash.