Album Reviews: Part I of II – Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures
Punk and Post Punk music remains as relevant as ever – we’ve reviewed several bands recently all playing to packed crowds, each unleashing a catharsis of sound after a year plus of life in the time of a pandemic. So it makes sense to re-visit two ground-breaking albums that in recent years have been remastered (you don’t remaster junk) and deserve continued evaluation: Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures and Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Kaleidoscope.
Unknown Pleasures, released in June 1979 under the Factory Records label, was the only full length LP commercially released during Ian Curtis’ lifetime. Following his suicide on the eve of a US tour, the surviving members, based on past agreement, renamed themselves New Order, and continue playing to this day. The Factory Records story was told in the 2002 fun flick worth seeing, 24 Hour Party People starring Steve Coogan. The movie tells the story of a 1976 gig by the Sex Pistols playing to a sparse crowd at the Manchester (UK) Lesser Free Trade Hall, including Joy Division members Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook (later joined by Curtis and the incredible Stephen Morris on drums to form Joy Division). This small show (12 song set) is purported to have launched the Punk era and the story goes that half in attendance went on to form their own bands. Joy Division was not unique then in their admiration for the loud, aggressive, simple, almost reductive music of the Sex Pistols, and their live music recordings from that era show why: in a washed-up world, with little hope, a future suspect, it’s cathartic to say fuck you, and this is everything that the Sex Pistols were about.
In any case, Punk took hold in a moment of fury and bands rode the wave, one being Joy Division, which released its own EP, leading to the band being signed by Tony Wilson’s Factory Records label. With an offer of a 50/50 split, the band headed to the studio to produce an album, the album that would become Unknown Pleasures.
In point of fact it wasn’t Joy Division that was responsible for the over-all sound of the Unknown Pleasures LP. As said, Joy Division was looking for a sound more akin to the Sex Pistols. The Unknown Pleasures studio sound was really a product of the work of producer Martin Hannett. The recordings for the LP took place over three separate weekends, and it was Harnett who “built in” to tracks open spaces, where notes and vocals had the space – and time – to literally be heard. Also built into the tracks were other sounds – a toilet flushing, breaking glass, etc. – not unlike what was done on Sgt. Peppers.
In the age of Spotify most of us do not listen to full-length LPs and rarely in order from song 1 on Side A to the last song on Side B. We listen to playlists, songs by a range of bands grouped together by the power of computer code. That is NOT the way to listen to either Unknown Pleasures or Kaleidiscope. These albums were arranged in a particular order, the best way to listen from beginning to end, and on vinyl if at all possible (and yes thank God it is ever more possible to listen to vinyl again).
The remastered Unknown Pleasures contains the LP’s original 10 songs, plus seven of the original ten and five others from a July, 1979 Factory show in Manchester. The first song on Side A, Disorder (like She’s Out of Control, the first song on Side B) is a perfect opener. Ten seconds in Peter Hook’s bass catches up to Morris’ drums, nailing the hard-edge punk rhythm line that underlines the entire song. From there Curtis’ vocals and Sumner’s guitar do what good songs do best, jump on top of the beat. Disorder is a perfect punk tune, classic 4/4 time with a very upbeat 172 beats per minute, and one that hints at the New Wave dance scene which will soon be a natural progression from these punk music basics, and is the central reason why Pleasures is such a ground-breaking album.
When playing at 172 BPM it can be really difficult to find places for melody, and that’s why Harnett’s production is so incredible. There’s not a lot of ambient noise in the LP, so when breaking glass or a synth made whoosh sound is mixed into a track it sounds like another instrument, creating a musical moment, fleeting maybe but one that can push a song forward, transition it to a new space, or add texture to the song’s base elements. The Ramones used to play at upwards of 180 BPM. Blitzkreig Bop is an incredible song but it’s a freight train plowing down the tracks; you jump on, hang tight, and enjoy the ride. Joy Division’s Disorder is a tight, up-beat tune with hallowed out space throughout that colors the entire album off the bat, and it’s a perfect post-punk song, defining the genre.
Day of the Lords, Candidate, Insight and New Dawn Fades follow Disorder on Side A. Both Days of the Lords and Candidate, and Side A closer New Dawn Fades are all reminiscent of the Doors’ The End, which makes sense as Curtis admitted of his admiration for the Doors (it helps that both Curtis and Jim Morrison were baritones); in each of these songs with the possible exception of New Dawn Fades the vocals are well in front of the instrumentation, and in each the music more moodish than rhythmic, the lyrics dark. Days of the Lords literally ends with the line “where will it end.” These are all songs you listen to on your floor, knees crossed, LP cover in your hand, head bent, ears alert. Insight, the remaining Side A song, also mutes much of the instrumentation to Curtis’ vocals but it’s gorgeous, sweet and subtle, refined, and chock full of Harnett’s add-ons: laser whips, pulsars and whooshes.
Side B is where it really happens, where you get off the floor and dance around your room, and contains several incredible songs, perhaps the best on the album including She’s Lost Control, Wilderness and the New Wave leaning Shadowplay. Shadowplay starts off like the Doors-like songs on Side A but which at about the 40 second mark explodes into a pulsating, wall of sound, guitar-lead, with whips, slashes, and burns, its transformic, robots turned human. She’s Lost Control starts with a tight light-note that bounces almost as a funk beat off the drum lines – it’s almost impossible not to move with the song, and then at the two minute mark that’s where the power chord starts running to the close, the light-note still there bouncing. Both She’s Lost Control and Shadowplay would find a nice home on NYC or Berlin dance floors in the New Wave era. On Wilderness Morris on drums shines, helped by a tight rhythm section in Sumner’s guitar and Hook’s base.
Closing out Side B are I Remember Nothing, the closer, and Interzone basically a solid new wave dance tune with Peter Hook, a nice alto, providing lead vocals, with backing vocals by Curtis. The closer I Remember Nothing is a Doors’ tune, the beginning lyrics several renditions of “We were strangers…” (Strange Days anyone.) The members of Joy Division have all warned not to read too much into the lyrics, that Curtis used to bring a “bag of writings” around with him and once the band would start on the drum and base riffs, Curtis would throw in a few lyrics and toot-sweet they had a song. That may have likely been the process, but you cannot hear I Remember and not hear Morrison’s vocals and lyrics and the Doors’ sound (with a here and there homage to Sgt. Peppers in the breaking glass and other odd Harnett flourishes).
So, what you have with Unknown Pleasures is both ground-breaking and retro, and the music is as relevant today as it was in 1979. There are four or five songs that are must-listen-tos but what makes the album is the translation of pure punk – angst driven, tight and simple, aggressive – into new wave dance music. And you don’t hear that any better than in the additional live songs from the 19780 Manchester show included in the album. Take a listen to Shadowplay and She’s Lost Control. The songs are faster than on the studio album, meaner, more aggressive, the musicians much freer to lean into their respective parts but the whole still strong and even more impactful than the studio LP. The guitar work on both songs is over the top, huge drivers that do not quite come out on the studio album. This is the music that tells you why New Order was able to survive Curtis’ death – the musicians were all fantastic. They played.
The live set also includes Transmission, a song recorded earlier than Unknown Pleasures, and released as a single but not included in the original Pleasures album release. There are no Doors influences in Transmission. This is loud, in your face, demanding, the chorus nothing but, “Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio,” repeated again and again. “There’s no language, just sound, that’s all we need to know” a direct refutation of the shaman-ish musings of Morrison. Even Interzone, generally muted on the studio album, is an in-your-face punk howl in the new live section.
Unknown Pleasures introduced the world to a new version of punk that would take storm as the New Wave genre, and that’s ground-breaking stuff, but to hear what the band was destined to become, the live set is a must-hear. This is where the musicians really shine, and you can hear on one side the driving beats that are hallmarks of the moshpit punk scene and on the other stand-alone, on top, guitar work, that would be the staple of the New Wave dance music. Harnett brought everything together for Unknown Pleasures but the music was already there, and damn good.
Christina Halladay of Sheer Mag and Alex Luciano of Diet Cig both recently talked about how you develop as a musician; they both said you “have to suck for a while.” Most musicians are really young when they get started; Ian Curtis died when he was just 23. Some musicians come out fully formed (like a John Bonham) but most are still learning their instrument when they are out doing their first gigs. The band Chastity Belt’s been out there a few years but if you listen to their first album, they had a number of great songs but musically it was all very basic. There was something different about Joy Division, and it wasn’t the tragi-story of Curtis’ suicide. As a four-person group they were together for an incredibly short period of time but they connected with each other and what they were able to do with a 3 or 4 minute “punk” tune influenced everything. It might have been inevitable; the roots of New Wave were there in punk but Joy Division was the first.
Next up Souixsie and the Banshee’s Kaleidiscope, another must-hear, and why.
