Get Ready, released in 2001 through London Records in the UK and Reprise Records in the US, is the seventh studio album by English Alternative Dance band New Order. Following the Troubled Production of 1993's Republic and an exhausting North American tour, the band spent the better chunk of the '90s on hiatus, with the members focusing on their various side-projects (with Bernard Sumner seeing a particularly good amount of attention in the UK leading Electronic). In 1998, the band regrouped at the suggestion of manager Rob Gretton, who had them iron out their past grudges; they would do their first show in four years at the Reading Festival, where they finally incorporated Joy Division material into their setlist for the first time since Ian Curtis' suicide in 1980. Gretton would pass away from a heart attack the following year.
After taking the time to recover from Gretton's death, the members of New Order decided to return to the studio in 2000 to put together a new studio album. With their last new material having come out nearly a decade prior, they chose to shake up their sound to account for how radically the cultural landscape had changed since Republic, and leaned into a more straightforward Alternative Rock sound with heavy components from newer forms of of Electronic Dance Music, both as a middle ground between Sumner and bassist Peter Hook's contrasting preferences and as a way of adapting to the post-OK Computer era.
Unlike the tense recording of Republic, the making of Get Ready went by fairly smoothly, allowing the album to be completed within just a year. Notably, the album sees the debut of Dawn Zee, who would act as a backing vocalist for the band on not only this album, but their following ones too. Conversely, it would also end up being the last album made with New Order's original lineup: Gillian Gilbert would temporarily retire to look after her and drummer/husband Stephen Morris' children, and though she ultimately rejoined the band in 2011, Hook would depart four years ahead of that.
Get Ready was supported by three singles: "Crystal", "60 Miles an Hour", and "Someone Like You".
Tracklist:
- "Crystal" (6:51)
- "60 Miles an Hour" (4:54)
- "Turn My Way" (5:05)
- "Vicious Streak" (5:40)
- "Primitive Notion" (5:43)
- "Slow Jam" (4:53)
- "Rock the Shack" (4:12)
- "Someone Like You" (5:42)
- "Close Range" (4:13)
- "Run Wild" (3:57)
You've got the tropes right in your hands:
- Alternative Rock: Compared to the Alternative Dance of the band's prior output, this album marks a shift to a more overt "rock" sound that would stay in place until Music Complete in 2015, though not without its share of electronic elements.
- And the Adventure Continues: "Run Wild", the album's closing track, ends with repeated mentions of "good times around the corner."
- Anti-Love Song: The shift in sound on this album didn't translate to a shift in songwriting style: most of the songs on the album are still about romantic dysfunction in some way, shape, or form.
- B-Side: This is notably New Order's last album to have traditional examples of this trope ("Behind Closed Doors" for "Crystal" and "Sabotage" for "60 Miles an Hour"). Their last original B-side would be "Such a Good Thing" on the 2002 reissue of "World in Motion...", and all later singles (including the ones for their following albums) would only include remixes.
- Color Motif: This is where the band's association with the color white really started to pick up, with the art for Get Ready and its surrounding singles focusing heavily on it. Aside from the Deliberately Monochrome cover art, both sides of the back inlay are stark white, as is the disc label (barring a red or green stripe near the bottom).
- Credits Gag: The inlay below the jewel case tray includes a mock product submission form, with the "client" differing depending on the region (since New Order were under different labels in the US and UK).
- Deliberately Monochrome: Barring the red stripe, the album cover and the photos in the liner notes are all black and white.
- Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The video for "60 Miles an Hour" portrays the song as being played on a tape that the bear-suited pickup truck driver owns.
- Epic Instrumental Opener: "Crystal" (and by extent, the album) starts with a 42-second synthesizer crescendo, punctuated only by a One-Woman Wail, before the main song comes in. The single release lops the intro off.
- Epic Rocking: "Crystal" goes on for nearly seven minutes.
- Fake Band: The music video for "Get Ready" revolves around one named "the Killers," played by a group of hired actors. Notably, New Order had been out of the public eye for so long by the time of the video's release that a significant chunk of viewers (including some from New Order's heyday) mistook the actors for the actual members. The video would later inspire another band to take that very name for themselves, with their frontman later performing vocals on New Order's "Superheated" in 2015.
- He's Back!: Get Ready was made as New Order's grand return to popular music after an 8-year break since their last album, and accordingly marked the start of a major mainstream comeback in Britain throughout much of the 2000s.
- Idiosyncratic Cover Art: The singles released in association of the album carry the same stripe motif as the album's own cover; "Crystal" and "60 Miles an Hour" both also include black and white photos of Nicolette Krebitz in the background, while "Someone Like You" is a single-color block with a white stripe. The single release of "Here to Stay" (from the 24-Hour Party People soundtrack) also continues the visual motif, though with a photo of the film's recreation of the Haçienda as the background.
- List Song: The chorus of "Turn My Way" mainly lists all the daily obligations the narrator doesn't want to do.
- Longest Song Goes Last: Inverted both ways: the album opens with its longest track ("Crystal", at 6:51) and closes with its shortest ("Run Wild", at 3:57).
- Minimalistic Cover Art:
- Simply a photograph of German model Nicolette "Coco" Krebitz and a single red stripe, a motif which carries onto the associated singles.
- The cover for "Crystal" was planned to be even more minimalist, simply being the red stripe plastered onto a clear slimline jewel case. The idea was rejected in favor of a shot of Krebitz removing her jeans, but Kanye West would eventually use Peter Saville's original concept for his own album Yeezus in 2015.
- Mythology Gag: Peter Hook's bass solo at the end of "Close Range" recalls the opening bassline for "Let's Go", from the band's contributions to the Salvation! soundtrack.
- New Sound Album: The band's Alternative Dance sound becomes more predominantly guitar-driven on this album compared to the increasingly electronic direction of its predecessors, informing the style of the band's next two records.
- Non-Appearing Title: "Slow Jam", "Close Range", "Run Wild"
- Not What It Looks Like: The video for "60 Miles An Hour" ends with a hunter spotting the guy in the bear suit leaning into the window of his pickup truck, mistaking him for an actual bear and hitting him with a tranquilizer dart.
- One-Woman Wail: "Crystal" starts with one, courtesy of backing vocalist Dawn Zee.
- Performance Video: The music video for "Crystal" is one... but with a Fake Band.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: "Primitive Notion" is a lengthy one to an estranged lover who had scorned the song's narrator.
- Sexy Packaging: Not the album itself, but the single release of "Crystal" sports a cover photo of Nicolette Krebitz removing her jeans.
- Sixth Ranger: Dawn Zee debuts on this album as the band's go-to backing vocalist, appearing on their following albums as well. Despite this, she was never inducted as an official member of the band.
- Soprano and Gravel: A rare male/male example with "Turn My Way", where Billy Corgan's trademark nasally and ethereal vocals contrast the audibly deeper-voiced (albeit not outright baritone) Bernard Sumner's lead.
- Special Guest:
- Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan provides backing vocals on "Turn My Way".
- Bobby Gillespie and Andrew Innes of Primal Scream respectively provide backing vocals and guitar on "Rock the Shack", itself co-produced by Nine Inch Nails and Depeche Mode collaborator Mark "Flood" Ellis.
- Splash of Color: The photos on the cover and in the liner notes all feature a red stripe to contrast the Deliberately Monochrome imagery. The disc label also contains a colored stripe on the bottom, which depending on the release is either red or neon green.
- Textless Album Cover: The main cover plays this straight, though the band name and album cover are included on the inlay below the CD tray's spine.
- Title-Only Chorus: "Rock the Shack".
