Never Cry Another Tear - Bad Lieutenant

Having offered some pretty unremarkable non-New Order projects in the past, Bernard Summer is abck to have another stab at things within Peter Hook, now that New Order have split for surely the last time.

Aside from the lack of Hooky's bass lines, Never Cry... inevitably sounds a lit like New Order, but offers more straightforward guitar rock and debuts new vocalist Jake Evans, who shares lead duties with The Seahorses. At its best, it's Noel Gallagher on a bad day. Thankfully, Summer's vocal, as always, is great. It's hard to pinpoint what makes it so special. Maybe it's the way he manages to sound effortless, remote and yet slightly strained all at once, while injecting tiny fragments of emotion. Regardless, his iconic voice is one of the few shining lights here. Lyrics are occasionally a problem though. Summer has never been an especially challenging lyricist and while in the past there was a certain charm to the simplicity of his words, here his wordplay comes across as cliched and lazy. This is Home boasts gems like, "Gonna take you higher than a bird can fly/ Girl I'm so in love with you/ Don't even think that it is true."

Some songs here ware better than latter-day New Order, but that's not saying much. Never Cry... is not a terrible record, but it feels like Summer could have churneed this out in his sleep.

Them Crooked Vultures

This is the new project featuring Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones, who individually have had involvement at some point in arguably some of the most influential (commercially or otherwise), if not most popular bands of the last 40 years. With this much talent present, it could be easily assumed that the "too many cooks spoil the broth" saying would apply. Thank the gods through this is actually one of the better records released in 2009, as it comes to an end, and, as one would expect, it covers epic shoegaze and sour blues to lo-fi rock and everywhere in between.

The album is complimented by splatterings of slide guitar and lap steel such as on New Fang and Stevie Wonder-type synth and organ on Scumbag Blues, a song worth listening to purely for the drum sound Songs For the Deaf nostalgia. This album works on a number of elvels in being some of the desert sessions B-sides that never made the cut, but for the most part it's a bunch of raging tunes that travel a number of different places. Off the charts heavy moments can also be found; such is the case with No One Loves Me And Neither Do I - you'll want to be sitting down from 2:43 onwards - while Elephants starts in one place and ends in another with many of these tracks on first listen not finishing how one might expedct them to. What really makes this album work though is that it sounds as if you're right in the studio with them and one can almost visualise what it would have been like making a record as unique and satisfying as these crooked vultures have.

8.5/10