New Order: Lost Sirens (2013)

When Sunrise temporarily went out of business, I picked up a few records there on the cheap. This was one of them. (By the way, speaking of Sunrise, I used to frequent the two locations on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. When the chain was resurrected, they failed to establish any stores in central Toronto. Now, there is a Sunrise location in Dufferin Mall. I went, but was not impressed. The store had what I would describe as a mainstream collection of records at very high prices. I will be surprised if management is able to keep this location open for long. Another aside: one thing I liked about the old Sunrise locations on Yonge was the selection of used records at fairly good prices. So far, the location in the Duff has no used bins. Maybe that has to do with the fact that there are a lot of record stores in Toronto looking for used merchandise).

When I played this record for the first and only time, I was not really impressed. Since then, it has been sitting on a shelf. Out of curiosity, I checked Allmusic for a review and was stunned to read this:

Trumpeted in some circles as a New Order rarities collection, Lost Sirens doesn't really fit the bill as such, but it does offer a wealth of bonus tracks from circa 2005 -- call it the second disc of the deluxe edition that was never released for Waiting for the Sirens' Call. [...] Compared to that album's half-hearted songwriting and rote sound, Lost Sirens positively shines -- leading to the customary questions of why this material didn't replace several, if not many, songs on the original Sirens' Call. [source]

I'll have to listen to it again. On a sad note, this was the last New Order record to feature Peter Hook. The band is not the same without him.