Hey folks!

Before we get started, an announcement: here is the interest form for the Best Album of 2001 Virtual Karaoke event! This will be an event hosted by @lanna.bsky.social and @nanette.bsky.social, and they need to know, first of all, where in the world you are so they can pick a good time, and also which song(s) you’d like to perform. Here is the form. The event is scheduled for June 14th, so please fill out this week! Thanks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#51 New Order, GET READY

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vs.

#78 Alicia Keys, SONGS IN A MINOR

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have two Designated Cheerleaders today, and both are for GET READY! First up, it’s @shuadc.bsky.social. Take it away, Don Incognito!

I am not sure that I can convince you that New Order’s Get Ready is the best album of 2001, but maybe I can persuade you that it deserves to move to the next round. Let’s start there.

Actually, let’s start with a number: 10/16. That’s the date Get Ready was introduced in the States in 2001, and it’s a number that has stuck with me, because when the album’s release date was announced, it hit me as a near total surprise. New Order hadn’t made an album since 1993’s Republic. Eight years is a long time in any musical era, but the eight years between ‘93 and ‘01 were particularly seismic. While grunge ballooned from alternative to pop to something like universal, and singer songwriters and Lilith Fair rose and fell, and REM made three albums, New Order – a seminal band of the 80s, a pioneer of 90s dance music – sat on the sidelines. Presumably broken up, or preoccupied with the Hacienda, or both.

So when a couple of new tracks appeared on Audiogalaxy or Limewire or whatever in 2001 and New Order announced a new album would drop, it seemed a little like the second coming. Or maybe like Jordan’s decision to return to the NBA and play for the Wizards. Unsure of what to expect, I burned the leaked tracks to a CD, called it 10/16, and waited. In the meantime, that number seemed to pop up everywhere. To this day, 10/16 will Baader-Meinhof its way into my brain, unbidden.

What did New Order return with? Get Ready is a very different album from Republic, which somehow involved New Order doing a video with the stars of Baywatch (maybe the hiatus was a good idea, frankly). Seriously: https://youtu.be/JfI8pJQbcZQ?si=Grd-e2yl5nI--DDo

Get Ready starts with the propulsive heartbeat of Crystal, a song that on its face feels like a return to form. There’s the drums, there’s a lil bit of synths, there’s Hook’s melodic base and Barnie’s somewhat strained singing and his less strained guitar playing.

But there’s more to Crystal than that. The lyrics seem self-reflective, eyeing the passage of time and attention with a certain jaundice. Applauded, then forgotten. Summer, now it's autumn. A band moving from trend-setters to eminence grise. It’s thus appropriate, if maybe a little on the nose, that the video for Crystal features an invented band, younger than the real one, singing under the name The Killers, which would serve as the inspiration for the band from Vegas that would soon become ubiquitous in college bars across the country.

Other parts of the album reflect a similar…call it maturation. There’s little in the way of overt grunge influence, but Turn My Way pulls in Billy Corgan, who also cites the band as an influence, to layer in a Smashing Pumpkins vibe.

And the whole album is less poppy, less synthy, than where New Order left off–more guitar (and especially) more of Hook’s bass. In fact, the best way to contextualize Get Ready is probably to put it next to Hook’s side project Monaco; several of the songs on the New Order disc could fit seamlessly onto Music for Pleasure, Monaco’s 1997 release.

Other songs are lyrically more clunky; Run Wild’s kind of forced religious imagery makes you yearn for the way Sumner wrote earlier tracks, by sort of free form associating over the music. But the rest of the album is (god forgive me) no less hooky. Every time I spin this disc I get 60 Miles an Hour and Vicious Streak stuck in my head for days.

The rebirth marked by Get Ready, and Hook’s seemingly outsized influence, would be short-lived. The band would make one more album with Hook before a full (and seemingly final) rupture led him to go off and form Peter Hook and the Light, a name he still tours under. The rest of the band continued on, with Gillian Gilbert returning and Tom Chapman taking over on bass. But the music New Order has released since has been somewhat wan. The band (and Joy Division before it) was always more than the sum of its parts, but I’d argue that the thing that defined both bands wasn’t so much the synths or the drums and drum machines or (and this is going to be controversial, given Ian Curtis’ outsize influence) the singing. It’s Hook’s bass. That energy, the transposition of Ennio Morricone onto a new wave dance beat, is what made New Order what it was. It’s also what transformed Love Will Tear Us Apart from a dirge into something you can dance to. Get Ready stands as the penultimate expression of that, and it has an energy that their final album together, Waiting for the Siren’s Call, just doesn’t. And if you don’t believe me on this point, catch a current New Order show and compare it to a Peter Hook show. I am pretty confident you’ll find the latter more entertaining, higher energy, and just more fun. He’s even on tour, right now, playing the entire Get Ready album from start to finish—I have my tickets for Sept, and I’m excited to see him again.

Get Ready may not be New Order’s high water mark (as an album, that’s almost inarguably Technique, though Substance is a better cross cut), but as the last strong expression of what the band was it serves as a valedictory of sorts. It’s the band, reuniting to show that they can still rock the shack, as it were, and it’s also a good-bye to the ecstasy fueled pop/dance music that the band had leaned into in the late 80s and early 90s. For that, it is a perfect way to end the old century and serve as a bridge to the new. And if that isn’t the best way to represent 2001, I don’t know what is.

Thank you, Don Incognito!

Next we have @jacobsberg.bsky.social. Take it away, Jake!

Welcome to New Order’s most ridiculous album, and maybe one of their most underrated. The whole thing is immaculately produced: “Crystal” starts off with guitars buzzing in from left and right channels, drum machine fills whir by, there are backing vocals, an electronica breakdown,... it’s lush in a very 2001 way and is much more expansive than what many of us expect from the band.

Republica would probably not have stood on rooftops, shouting out “Baby, I’m ready to go!” without Technique and Republic, and here New Order returns the favor, dropping nine Eurotrash technopoppunk bangers, from the sleek minimalism of “Vicious Streak” to the propulsive swirl of synths, drum machines, and jagged guitars of “Close Range.” Many of these songs crack the 5-minute mark, but I have so much fun listening to Get Ready that I didn’t realize until I checked Wikipedia.

There’s an alternative universe where fans in stadiums chant “Rock the Shack,” and yes, that’s Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream sharing vocals. Alas, there was no Jock Jams, Volume 6 for it to be included on. Before that cameo, the first voice you hear on “Turn My Way” is Billy Corrigan’s for some reason, but damn, Peter Hook’s bass on this still sounds great. Even by his lofty standards, he does excellent work on this album, as does Bernard Summer’s guitar playing.

The same probably can’t be said for Summer as a singer. He starts off the album rhyming “honey” and “money” on a chorus and ends the album with “die” and “high.” This album works better if you treat it as someone whose third language is English. Inexplicably, that last tenth song features Summer strumming crooning about Jesus in one of the least New Order-y songs in their catalog.

A lot of people thought this would be the band’s final album, but they’ve come back with two more since. Chronologically, however, this will be probably the last to make the field of 128 in a Best Albums bracket. They didn’t quite save their best for last, but it’s pretty damn good, both a departure and a continuation. Get Ready placed 22nd in In The Village Voice's 2001 Pazz & Jop poll. I had it between 5-10 in my 2001 year end list.

Fun fact that music nerds already know: The Killers get their name from the band playing in the music video for “Crystal.” We’ll see Brandon Flowers, et al in a future Best Album bracket, along with Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem, and a bunch of other bands influenced by New Order. Get Ready is better than all of them, save maybe Hot Fuss. Maybe.

Thank you, Jake!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Yesterday, #14 Jay-Z, THE BLUEPRINT defeated #115 Gotan Project, LA REVANCHA DEL TANGO, 96-81-6. That final score is a little deceiving. LA REVANCHA, the #115 seed, kept the match competitive the entire time, at times coming as close as 6 votes. It was a 10-vote match until I reposted it with 25 minutes left, which garnered BLUEPRINT an extra five. Historically, even logically, LA REVANCHA should not have given BLUEPRINT such a hard time. LA REVANCHA, we salute you and your effort. Thank you for keeping us all on our toes.

Thanks,

Kent