#108

Nice of you to say. I copy most of the good stuff from Simon Reynolds’s book Rip it Up. The gratuitous insults directed at Muse and Blur are all my own.

12 Likes
#109

Waiting for all the 5/5 reviews from people who recently said that three great albums wasn’t enough for a certain other band. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#110

Movement always feels a bit like the lost 3rd Joy Division album. which is why it’s my favourite New Order album.

(obviously Curtis is a different sort of vocalist to Sumner or Hook but they’re both essentially doing Curtis impressions on that album)

3 Likes
#111

not sure about this. didn’t New Order record the Ceremony single as a 3 piece initially before getting Gillian in and re-recording it?

1 Like
#112

After Ian Curtis’s death in May 1980, the three remaining members of Joy Division renamed the band New Order. Wishing to complete their line-up with someone they knew well and whose musical skill and style was compatible with their own, New Order invited Gilbert to join the band during the early part of October 1980, as keyboardist and guitarist. She had already played with Joy Division a number of times, filling in for both Curtis and Sumner playing guitar.

oh fair enough

1 Like
#113

Tbh post-punk is the wrong label for JD, they’re definitely Goth. I believe Peter Hook also championed some not great Goth bands in the 80s saying they were the inheritors to the Joy Division sound.

#114

I agree and feel they would have gone synth but probably slowly, we will never really know.

Circa 1983 I heard Blue Monday on the radio and was like, wow what is THAT! I know it gets derided a little but I love it. Needless to say my pocket money was spent on that magnificently sleeved 12 inch single, I really got into it and loved that the B side was essentially a dub version (The Beach). From there I bought more New Order singles and began to really love them, only then did some tell me that they used to be Joy Division. I never knew who Joy Division were but was familiar with Love Will Tear Us Apart somehow.

I would have been around 13 then and a friend had an older sister who I wouldn’t really talk to but would say hello, she was like 24 or something so huge age gap but she lent me Closer which I taped and returned. It took 3 or 4 listens as the album is not immediately accessible. Also I taped it in the wrong order, Side B, Side A as the Factory art doesn’t really indicate which side first so any profound concept I was beginning to read into it makes me smile a bit now. I don’t think I realised this until the CD came out.

Closer does take more than a few listens I feel and is not catchy, for anyone reading this that has skimmed it I would implore anyone to try the album again if they do not get it straight away. What may unfold is for you to discover. Personally I feel it is the best album I have ever heard or will ever hear and I stated before I can really only listen to it about once a year as it’s so devastating. My Nan passed away about 8 years ago and she’d lived a very long life and I was finding it hard to grieve, a few weeks later I decided it was time to listen to Closer and it tore me apart, in a good way.

Apologies for the long reply, an album worth investing time in.

7 Likes
#115

hate all this genre stuff, this drum sound is for this genre, these guys invented this. Do people really think nobody can come up with interesting or varied ideas until somebody defines what kind of music they should be making? Oh we only like the drum to be hit on the 3rd beat so we will never try anything else

#116

like nobody thought to play a melody on a bass guitar until it was codified into a genre? Totally false

2 Likes
#117

would say they’re an archetypal post-punk band tbh

1 Like
#118

This is their other best song tho

4 Likes
#119

no. genre labels are applied retroactively, and are usually helpful.

#120

If an artist is considered just one narrow genre then they are pretty lazy imo, like you only wanted to write one kind of song? Why would you do that?

#121

bands can span multiple genres

#122

Agree, his posts are always a great read.

1 Like
#123

yeah or a better way to think about it is that people just make music

#124

Feel, as a self professed punk professor, personally attacked :sob:

#125

bit too vague.

#126

It’s kind of splitting hairs / narcissism of small differences but something like PiL is more post-punk than JD are. Pulling from similar stuff but arriving at very different ends (the self indulgence of metal box* compared to the economy of the JD sound being the main thing).

*PiL are great love em for the self indulgence aspect of their music

#127

like obviously everything has constituent parts but how important is it to a painting which chemical compounds make up the colour blue?