Joy Division: Unknown Pleasures

Unknown Pleasures

Best song: She’s Lost Control

Worst song: Interzone

Overall grade: 6

I recently saw someone wearing an ‘Unknown Pleasures’ T-shirt and had an internal debate about whether to go over and talk to them. I didn’t, because I knew there was a chance they didn’t actually know the album and just liked the design, but assuming they did, it made me realise: it isn’t an album you just listen to quietly, put away and don’t tell anyone about. You have to wear its T-shirt, send it to your friends, and shout out: ‘Unknown Pleasures is freaking awesome!’

Since its release it’s come to be labelled as ‘post-punk’, but at the time, it defied classification. It clearly had punk influences, but it was different. More focused. Very cold, calculated and relentlessly dark. Every part of it feels like it has a direction – that  Ian Curtis knew exactly what he was doing and wasn’t going to settle for any filler or anything that didn’t demand your full attention.

‘She’s Lost Control’, with its strong and repeated vocal hook, was the only song that really stood out to me on first listen, with everything else blending into one, but over time I’ve come to appreciate the differences between them. For example, you’ve got ‘Wilderness’, which is the one that’s full of the intermittent drum parts, ‘Disorder’ is the one with the awesome bassline, ‘I Remember Nothing’ is the one that’s mostly built on atmosphere, and ‘Interzone’ is the one that nobody actually cares about.     

The melodies here are unpredictable and slightly messed up – you can see this best on ‘Day of the Lords’, one of the better slower songs, although who cares about the minor difference in quality between this song and the almost-as-good ‘Candidate’ with its call-and-response bass/vocal lines, or the haunting ‘New Dawn Fades’? Also, can you tell I’m finding this review really difficult to write? I guess this is an album that’s incredibly hard to find words for. You know every song has an effect, but working out what that effect is is much harder.

A friend of mine likes Joy Division in theory but complains about the vocals. Ian Curtis certainly can’t sing as well as he writes, but his singing does nevertheless add to the lyrics. In places it’s full of emotion, and then in other places it’s even more effective in the way it’s robotic and apathetic, which is a far better description of depression.

If I had a list of top albums based on production, this would be my favourite. It’s pretty much perfect, creating an illusion of spaciousness and distance and the idea that you can never quite reach it. ‘Interzone’ may be weaker, and ‘I Remember Nothing’ an acquired taste to many, but I really think this album can only be appreciated properly when it’s listened to all at once. It’s such an insight (haha, Joy Division puns) into how Ian Curtis was feeling at the time he was writing it, yet at the same time, it still seems surrounded in mystery.