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Music Complete is the tenth studio album by English rock music band New Order. The album was released on September 25, 2016, by Mute Records; it was New Order's debut on the label. The album features guest vocals from Iggy Pop, Elly Jackson of La Roux, and Brandon Flowers of The Killers. This is the band's first album with new bassist Tom Chapman, replacing the original bassist Peter Hook. It also marked the first time New Order existed as a five-piece band, as original keyboardist and guitarist Gillian Gilbert returned to the band, while Phil Cunningham, who initially replaced Gilbert, remained in the band. As of 2026, this is the band's most recent album.
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Reviews
There’s a few new tricks on this New Order LP, but for the most part the band sounds tired, uninspired, and in desperate need of a farewell tour. The same outfit that wrote rippers like ‘Age of Consent’ and ‘Blue Monday’ fails to produce anything mildly exciting throughout this album’s bloated runtime. It all sounds relatively homogeneous, with no real standout tracks to point to. Really feels like the band was going through the motions rather than trying to make anything inspired. Wasn’t surprised to find that Peter Hook did not contribute to this album, given how limp the bass lines felt and how much the songwriting lacked its usual verve. Part of being an artist is knowing when to hang up the towel and let an existing body of work stand for itself rather than squeezing it for everything it’s worth. This album doesn’t really need to exist, much less run for over an hour, as it doesn’t nothing but detract from the New Order discography. It certainly doesn’t need to be on the user list, either, given the band has several official 1001 picks already and there are many deserving artists with less stale ideas waiting in the wings.
not their best work, but I had fun - 8/10
Would the world listen to this if it wasn't New Order? Possibly not, and that's my honest answer. Music Complete has genuine moments. Singularity and Stray Dog hold up well on repeated listens, the latter featuring Iggy Pop in fine form, even if it sounds very much like Public Service Broadcasting's "Go!" than anything New Order have done before. Tutti Frutti has a Daft Punk quality that's undeniably fun. But that's precisely the problem for me at times. For a band this influential, finding themselves sounding borrowed from artists they helped inspire is a specific kind of late-career irony. Plastic feels very Giorgio Moroder. The Kent comparison hovers over Restless, which was inexplicably chosen as the single despite being one of the weaker tracks. And The Game, Superheated, and People on the High Line could have been cut without anyone noticing. The album is a bit too long and too uneven to fully recommend, but not without its pleasures. I'll return to it in a while and see how it lands with distance.