Traditionally you’d take a year or two to write and record an album, then you’d go on tour,” says New Order’s lead singer Bernard Sumner with his soft Mancunian accent. “But things are working differently in the music business these days. The new idea is that we’re going to play concerts in small bursts, like nine dates, then go back and write a bit, and then play another nine concerts. Just so we don’t disappear off the face of the earth for long.”
New Order (along with opening act Johnny Marr) come to the Santa Barbara Bowl on Thursday, but the announcement of this date was indeed a surprise. Following a rancorous split with founding bass player Peter Hook, the band really hasn’t released an album since 2005’s “Waiting for the Siren’s Call” and the 2011 mop-up B-sides release “Lost Sirens.” But no, here they are again.