What might have been, we’ll never really know. In the early hours of 18th May 1980 Joy Division singer Ian Curtis took his own life. They were to imminently embark on their first US tour, something they had all reportedly been excited about, and “Closer” was to be released in July. 

Martin Hannett is again in the Producer’s chair but this time the sound is a lot more refined and uniform than the patchy “Unknown Pleasures”. Again Peter Hook was unhappy with the production “I was like, head in hands, oh fucking hell, it's happening again. Unknown Pleasures number two…I was so annoyed with him (Hannett) and went in and gave him a piece of my mind but he just turned around and told me to fuck off”. Considering Hooky’s disappointment at their first album sounding like Pink Floyd it’s ironic that “Closer” was recorded at the studio Floyd built, Britannia Row in London.

You can almost divide the songs on “Closer” into two parts, those written before the recording session started which are more guitar based ("Atrocity Exhibition", "Passover", "Colony", "A Means To An End" and "Twenty Four Hours”) all of which had been played live during the later part of 1979. Then there are those songs written in early 1980 as the album sessions approached, all of which feature greater use of synthesizers ("Isolation", "Heart and Soul", "The Eternal" and "Decades”).

“Atrocity Exhibition” is constructed around Stephen Morris’ rolling and repetitive drum pattern. It’s unnerving, presenting a feeling of horror and sadness. It was significantly influenced by J.J Ballard’s 1970 novel “The Atrocity Exhibition” about which Ballard has said “I was terribly wounded by my wife's death…To some extent The Atrocity Exhibition is an attempt to explain all the terrible violence that I saw around me in the early sixties”. Ian Curtis wrote these feelings into the lyrics and Bernard Sumners screeching guitar effects, buried way back in the mix, add to the feeling of something terrible approaching.

“You'll see the horrors of a faraway place, Meet the architects of law face to face

See mass murder on a scale you've never seen, And all the ones who try hard to succeed”

Like all Curtis’ lyrics, cryptic but beautifully poetic. The song is stark and metronomic with the repeated refrain (you can’t really call it a chorus) of “This is the way, step inside, This is the way, step inside” adding to the bleakness pictured in the verses.

“Isolation” falls into the category of songs that have done away with guitars in favour of Bernard Sumner playing synthesiser. It’s a relentless dancefloor pounder in the style of “She’s Lost Control” driven along by Morris’ synthetic drumming and Hooky’s Bass. Curtis’ words express disappointment in himself

“Mother, I tried, please believe me, I’m doing the best that I can

I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through, I’m ashamed of the person I am

Isolation…”

But in the very next verse he intones 

“But if you could just see the beauty, These things I could never describe

These pleasure's a wayward distraction, This is my one lucky prize”

It’s a perplexing song, I’ve seen it fill many a dancefloor yet the writer himself seems confused in the lyrics, ashamed yet seeing the beauty in some things.

The start of side 2 presents you with two of Joy Division’s greatest songs. “Heart And Soul” continues in “Isolations” vein. The drums are more natural now but just as driving, the Bass now feels like it may be synthesized. Curtis sounds like he’s singing from deep within a cave, his voice swathed in reverb, like he’s hiding from something. Sumner cuts through this (again I can only describe it as) claustrophobia with bright shimmering guitar chords

“Existence, well, what does it matter? I exist on the best terms I can

The past is now part of my future, The present is well out of hand

Heart and soul, One will burn”

Next, “Twenty Four Hours” begins quite gently on a strummed Bass guitar and then suddenly explodes into a furious rush. Curtis opening verse hinting at the problems in his relationships that were affecting him so greatly

“So this is permanent, love's shattered pride

What once was innocence, turned on its side

A cloud hangs over me, marks every move

Deep in the memory, what once was love”

“Closer” is superb, no question. Let’s also note that some of Joy Division’s greatest songs don’t appear on either of their albums (“Transmission”, “Dead Souls”, “Atmosphere” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart”) and yet both their albums still are regarded as classics. “Closer” is in no way an easy listen, it’s utterly intense and demands you pay close attention from the very start. Curtis lyrics hint at some of the reasons he decided to exit this life and are every bit as poetic and personal as those of Linton Kwesi Johnson, just in a different genre. Peter Hook has said they never really asked Ian what his lyrics meant or were about but on reading them after his death he found the explanations to Ian’s difficulties were all there. “Closer” is a beautiful yet heartbreaking monument to Joy Division’s lasting power and influence…what might have been ?

Twenty Four Hours - https://youtu.be/F9ourSxX8ao?si=UwYVPG75SupnXEGZ

All my Joy Division albums are re-issues, this particular one from 2019 in a white, rather than a black sleeve and pressed on transluscent red vinyl. Back when this was originally released money was tight, there were a lot of records to buy and Miles owned these Joy Division records so if I wanted to hear them they were available to me, but there was no point having 2 copies in the house. Eventually I needed my own, hence the re-issues. 

Joy Division are the most important band to sally forth from Manchester in my musical timeframe. No, not New Order, without Joy Division there likely is no New Order, and no, most certainly none of the litany of miserabalists and baggy trousered drug fiends that have come since…Mr Smith can take his Roses and stick ‘em where the sun don’t shine, on a Monday if he wishes, mere pretenders in JD’s presence.

“Unknown Pleasures” was recorded and mixed over 3 weekends in Stockport’s Strawberry Studios, the very same studio in which 10cc created “I’m Not In Love”. It has its problems, to my ears, but that doesn’t affect its beauty, importance and influence. Although producer Martin Hannett is credited with employing some unusual production techniques (including recording the studio lift and feeding the sound through a Leslie cabinet, recording an Ian Curtis vocal down a telephone line  and including the sound of the basement toilet) on the whole I’ve always thought the overall sound is really disappointing, it sounds like an album that was recorded over disparate sessions with no mind paid to what the previous session sounded like, in places it sounds like demo’s. What could this have sounded like were it produced better or would it have just disappeared if it had sounded any different ? Many hail it as a great production so what do I know…

Ian Curtis reportedly did like it. Bernard Sumner didn’t saying "The music was loud and heavy, and we felt that Martin had toned it down, especially with the guitars. The production inflicted this dark, doomy mood over the album” you only hear the loud and heavy JD on “Interzone”. Drummer Steven Morris was a fan “listening to a record and going to a gig were quite different. You don't want to hear a record when you go to a gig, you want something with a bit of energy”. Peter Hook initially didn’t like it "I couldn't hide my disappointment then, it sounded like Pink Floyd." but has changed his mind since "It definitely didn't turn out sounding the way I wanted it...There's no two ways about it, Martin Hannett created the Joy Division sound.”.

I do have a real bugbear with opening song “Disorder”. It rattles along at a good old trap but…when it gets to the instrumental breaks between the verses there is a 4 note section of Hooky’s bass line that is in the wrong key. I can hear what he’s trying to do but what he plays is just wrong and I can’t believe it got onto the record, it grates with me every time I hear it. 

“Day Of The Lords” is a huge, thunderous thing that builds out of a riff, that probably has had a great subsequent influence on Stoner Rock, into a chorus that, by the end, Curtis is screaming, obviously at his wits end “Where will it end, Where will it end ?”

“She’s Lost Control” developed out of drummer Stephen Morris buying a syndrum because he thought he saw one on the cover of a Can album. It’s a mutant dance tune and one that became a favourite in the Futurist clubs in the early 80’s. That is followed by “Unknown Pleasures” absolute gem, “Shadowplay”. Hooky’s foreboding sounding bass leads us in until Bernard announces his arrival with crashing chords and Ian Curtis delivers the devastating opening lines

“To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you

To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you”

This is one song where Hannett’s production does work. There is space in it, whereas the playing suggests something more claustrophobic Hannett gives the song space to move in.

“Interzone” has an" interesting" backstory. Very briefly Joy Division were signed to RCA and some deep thinker (!!!) in the A&R department put 2 and 2 together and obviously came up with 3 and a half. It went like this, Joy Division are from the North and so was Northern Soul so Joy Division should cover an old Northern Soul tune…genius right ? Well, no, but bless them they did try and work up a version of NF Porter’s floorfiller “Keep On Keeping On”. It didn’t work out but if you know that tune you can hear a remnant of it in the guitars of “Interzone” which is what that ill fated cover version developed into.

“Unknown Pleasures” set the template for what came to be known as Post-Punk (although Joy Division saw themselves as a Punk group). The cover art has taken on a life of its own with even Disney producing a Micky Mouse t-shirt based on Peter Saville’s design. It’s a bleak but forward looking record and although it wears its influences it never really sounds like any of them. New people are still discovering Joy Division, I get young kids asking for them in the shop regularly. Better them than any other Manchester pretenders to their crown.

Shadowplay - https://youtu.be/oZSGVE_0f3c?si=y8GOoXsMkrg40RB_

A new addition to my collection so yes it’s alphabetically out of step, but I’ve decided to drop things like this in as we go along (apologies to anyone suffering from alphabetical OCD).

Think of all the great bands that have released records on Polydor…Slade, The Jam, The Wonder Stuff, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Sam Fender it’s a long auld list. But none of those artists hold the accolade of having the biggest selling debut album in the long history of Polydor Records (it was founded in 1913). That particular marker belongs to Cast and “All Change”.

Cast were formed in 1992 by John Power (formerly of The La’s) and Peter Wilkinson (ex of Shack). Cast are always, unfairly to my mind, included in any conversation about the risible musical “movement” BritPop. BritPop was a lazy journalists invention to pigeonhole three acts who all came flouncing along at roughly the same time, Oasis, Blur(gh) and Pulp. Poor old Paul Weller was roped in as the “Godfather of BritPop” and subsequently the odd coat-tail grabbing, band wagon jumper like Ocean Colour (Duller ?) Scene and The Enemy were included too. Cast were oh so much better than that lame bunch.

There’s something about Liverpool, all that social and musical history, that means it produces music with a certain indefinable something about it. That’s not to say that all the music out of Liverpool sounds the same, very obviously it doesn’t, but it has a sound that is Liverpool. Think of The La’s and Cast and the Real People and Amsterdam and many others and there’s something about what they did/do that when you hear their music, whether you know anything about them or not, you, or at least I, think “this is from Liverpool”, it just sounds like the city. We went up to Ian Prowse’s Monday Club recently (something I would recommend anyone to do) and there were guys on that night that, to me, sounded like that music couldn’t have been made anywhere but Liverpool.

You want examples ? Well…The La’s “Timeless Melody”, Cast’s “History”, the Real People’s “Window Pane”, Amsterdam’s “The Journey”, all have an unquantifiable something about them that point to the City they were birthed in. It’s something that I first heard in The La’s which is probably why I hear it so strongly in Cast too.

“All Change” has sold over a million copies now, it offered up 4 hit singles “Finetime” (#17), “Alright” (#13), “Sandstorm”  (#8) and “Walkaway”  (#9), a record company dream. But it’s not a throwaway “pop” record. There’s great songwriting and melody here, substance which albums that have those sorts of numbers and that many hit singles don’t usually offer up. Had “History” been released as a single I think it would have topped even “Sandstorm”s chart placing. 

It’s an album loaded with hooks and not just in the singles, “Tell It Like It Is”, “Promised Land” and “Mankind” all have little barbs that catch into you so you find yourself humming them a couple of days later. It’s also an album full of positivity both in the way the music sounds and feels and the words, with lyrical nods to honour, truth, good living, fun and getting the girl (but nothing about killing the baddies). Positivity was something I found sorely lacking in “BritPop”. Cast kept it up too. Their 2011 album “Troubled Times” is well worth a listen if you were a fan of “All Change” back then. 

History - https://youtu.be/G1pCIrnGr8s?si=kCa6fSQKOAUVc3l8