Brotherhood is the first New Order album that doesn’t feel like a step forward. That’s not to say that it’s “bad” or even “not very, very good”–it is very, very good, and in much the same ways that all the other New Order albums have been very, very good. So I’m not referring to a problem so much as just a description: Brotherhood is very much a lateral move on New Order’s part. It lacks the radical leap toward electronica that defined Power, Corruption & Lies, and it doesn’t feature the supreme refinement that made Low-Life even better. This is just a New Order album.

I mean, “just” a New Order album. This is still phenomenal work, and four albums in (three if you’re excluding the purely post-punk Movement), the band’s mix of electronics with post-punk has plenty of gas in the tank. On the whole, this is at least A- work that’s a joy to listen to. There’s been some discussion in the comments about how New Order is a great bridge between “rockism” to a viewpoint more inclusive of synths and electronica in large part because the band’s fusion of both is so potent in its distilling what’s appealing and accessible about both musical poles: the emotional straightforwardness and song structure of the rock/pop spectrum married with the hypnotic grooves and attention to textual detail in electronic dance. Pretty much the whole album is a model of this, especially the moody, desperate opener, “Paradise,” and the mid-album “Broken Promise,” which manages to find the common ground between the bass-heavy undercurrents of post-punk and the grooves of fast-paced dance in a legitimately intriguing way that suggests that a post-punk band was bound to eventually go the New Order route, given the musical premises of the genre.

And yet… I can’t end this review without mentioning that I don’t think it’s quite as good as either Power or Low-Life. The band has never been the lyrical powerhouse that Joy Division was, but it’s here that the lyrics seem to have been entirely secondary (and maybe even superfluous). The New Order appeal is almost entirely banked on sonics now, which is cool on an aural level but not quite satisfying intellectually. There’s also the feeling that the band is gradually tightening their focus by flattening their dynamics a bit: there are no epic experiments like “Elegia,” for example, and the songs (always enjoyably listenable), are never all that surprising in the ways that they hit the narrowing scope. This might all feel a bit better if the record had the same level of songwriting going on here as in the previous albums, but, excellent as they are, everything feels just a notch below the band’s best work. I know “Bizarre Love Triangle” is supposed to be the big track from this album in the same way that “Age of Consent” and “Elegia” were for the earlier albums, but that song’s not doing it for me. It’s fun and all, don’t get me wrong; it’s just not amazing.

I realize this is sort of like complaining that your Rolls-Royce doesn’t have satellite radio. It’s still a Rolls-Royce. It’s still New Order (and very good New Order at that). I guess I’ve just been so spoiled by a run of masterpieces that a mere 9.0 can register as a disappointment.