Joy Division—Unknown Pleasures

Joy Division—Unknown Pleasures (1979)

Unknown Pleasures—Joy Division's singular debut was their third recording on their third label, which is the greatest testament to how hard it was to identify the band. The rejected full-length Warsaw and the self-released EP An Ideal for Living (1978) were promising in their own ways (though the former could not commercially be heard until 1994). The latter picked four fascism-fascinated songs from their repertoire and delivered them in fairly straightforward punk fashion, though the overall tone and production values gave them a bleak coloration from the beginning.

The band's rise is inextricably tied to the formation of Factory Records, an independent label formed in 1978 by television host Tony Wilson, actor Alan Erasmus, artist Peter Saville, and record producer Martin "Zero" Hannett. Joy Division joined the label soon after appearing on Wilson's music TV series So It Goes, and appeared on A Factory Sample (1978) along with The Durutti Column, John Dowie, and Cabaret Voltaire. They contribute the songs "Digital" and "Glass," which forecast the sound of their forthcoming album, Unknown Pleasures. Produced by Hannett (who until then was only known for producing the Buzzcocks' debut EP Spiral Scratch and some spoken word acts), the band's sound was now clearer and more pronounced, more drum-focused, and was characterized by many strange sound effects. "Glass," for example, featured a range of electronic noises and handclaps, neither of which were notable on their own, but made for a unique mix.

The album format also had the effect of focusing lead singer Ian Curtis' lyrical themes, which during their early phase were more integral to the song rather than the overall ambiance. That's not to say Unknown Pleasures is a marked concept album, but the shift from surface punk angst to the dark depression of songs like "Disorder" is stark. Accentuated by Peter Hook's melodic bass lines and surrounded by Hannett's phantasmal effects, Curtis sings one of his most well-known and characteristic verses: "I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand/Could these sensations make me feel the pleasures of a normal man/New sensations bear the insults, leave them for another day/I've got the spirit, lose the feeling, take the shock away." The eerie, shambling "Day of the Lords" paints a war-torn generation. The two songs form an effective one-two punch because they both descend into affecting, authentic catharses; with another band, "Disorder" might be too obscure and "Day of the Lords" might drag. The creeping dirge "Candidate" is a sinister representation of a relationship destroyed by an unwillingness to compromise. The pessimistic, dejected "Insight" is infused with various alarming noises that give it an apocalyptic feel, plus enigmatic electronic squeaking. The devilish "New Dawn Fades" is the album's climax: a flawed person's struggle that unfortunately turned out to be autobiographical.

"She's Lost Control," inspired by the epilepsy-related death of a girl whom Curtis had met at his day job (a condition he suffered from himself), is characterized by its harrowing, ritualistic mantra. The awesome "Shadowplay" is the album's most explosive song, with cutting guitar that perfectly complements Curtis' increasing pandemonium. "Wilderness" is the most thematically and sentimentally basic (as well as most repetitive) song on the album. The Naked Lunch-inspired "Interzone" is the only song in Joy Division's main canon where another member (Hook) sings lead, though Curtis can be heard answering in the background. The isolative abyss of "I Remember Nothing," replete with sounds of breaking glass and other curiosities, possibly represents best the surface idiosyncrasies of the band without exactly getting into self-parody—it's amusing to note that the Talking Heads song "The Overload," which attempted to capture Joy Division's purported sound without having actually heard it, sounds exactly like "I Remember Nothing."

Unknown Pleasures, and by extension Joy Division themselves, is an anomaly. It at once sounds muddled, like a debut might, and developed—the kind of sound only a band with experience can come up with. That can be explained by the avant-garde production of Martin Hannett and the fact that Pleasures wasn't technically their first album attempt, but it also speaks to the striking, visionary lyrics of Ian Curtis and the surprising proficiency of the band. The album occasionally borders on boring musically, but in its best moments, it's emotionally moving and tastefully literate. It bears a sympathetic tone that works paradoxically well with the power of its riffs and animalistic percussion, creating a sound that for many people defined U.K. post-punk, arguably establishing them as the movement's premier band.