If you could measure a degree of darkness for music, it would be difficult to imagine a darker one than that created by Joy Division’s songs. However, Peter Hook was showing a warm and bright disposition on Friday night at the El Rey theater, smiling to the crowd, making direct eye contact with us, finger pointing while dedicating the song that closed the night ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ to everyone, ‘This is for you, you, you, you, you, you…’. There is no doubt, there was a sort of contrast between his approachable personality and the sinister and gloomy place he was inviting us to, but at least he was not trying to be Ian Curtis and he was right.
Peter Hook and his band, the Light, were playing their second night in Los Angeles, and after reinterpreting ‘Closer’ at the Music Box, it was ‘Unknown Pleasures’ time at the El Rey theater. Quite unoriginally, many t-shirts in the crowd were matching the stage background reproducing the famous album cover, but you could tell how everyone, young or older (much older than I am used to see at the El Rey) was there to hear the music in all its rawness and darkness.
I was not listening to that kind of music in the 70s-80s and I hadn't seen en Joy Division live, only footage and videos, but it is not the same thing,… so I didn’t have any real visual reference, and I was not trying to have any before going to the show. ‘It was awesome’ a guy next to me said when the show was over, visibly overwhelmed by the experience, ‘Yes it was’ I replied, because yes, it was.
Hooke took enormous risks when he decided to do this, but he and The Light cannot be regarded as a Joy Division cover band, he was in the band and if the atmosphere and the lyrics of the album (not always decipherable during the show) were heavy, sinister and all imbued in a gloomy depressive state of mind that Hook could not embody, he was playing it victorious, aggressive, rising his right arm in the air all the time, and enjoying himself.
The band members looked equally young, although they were in the dark most of the time, doing a great job at rendering these cult-like songs live, songs that the first rows were singing along, visibly fascinated by the whole experience. I realized afterwards that his son Jack Bates, who was playing bass, was next to me the day before, during the whole time his father was doing the signing at Amoeba,…
Before playing the whole album ‘Unknown Pleasures’, they started the show with a few singles featured on the ‘Substance’ album, and the crowd cheered up when they recognized the first notes of ‘Disorder’, announcing the beginning of what they were expecting. Thirty one years ago, Joy Division were supposed to start their first American tour, something that obviously did not happen due to Curtis’s tragic suicide, and I was under the impression that the older people in that crowd were trying to catch up with that emotion that was sadly robbed from them. And the younger ones? They were the ones being falsely nostalgic, in love with something they hadn’t even lived, but decided to find it this night.
Hooke’s deep and raucous voice was going into the screaming range at times – the way he sang ‘She’s lost control again’ was almost feisty – but obviously his voice was not the strongest part of the show, he is not a great singer and he certainly didn’t make me think about the Curtis-mimicking vocal chords of Paul Banks.
This is probably why he asked Moby to do the singing part on some of the songs, and the bald skinny guy came on stage to sing ‘Insight’ and ‘New Dawn Fades’, as well as ‘Transmission’ during the encore, and I must say his vocals were matching quite well Curtis’ originals, while he was doing a constant back and forth stage movement that was animating the scene.
The band and Hooke’s vocals were particular at ease with hard rocking numbers like ‘Interzone’ and ‘Warsaw’, and then, gone was the contrast from the beginning of the show, the impetuous side of Joy Division fitting Hooke’s personality much better than its dark and bleak one.
The crowd was really into the music, the band came back for an encore of five songs, but it is only when they played ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ that everyone became really crazy, there were even a few people crowd surfing, landing in the pit, happy like after the accomplishment of a dream.
And nobody cared if they played this intimate and ultimately despairing song, U2-style, legs apart, like a rock arena number, everyone was abnormally exhilarated to hear one of the saddest songs ever written.
Setlist:
No love lost
Leaders of men
Glass
Digital
Disorder
Day of the lords
Candidate
Insight
New dawn fades
She’s lost control
Shadowplay
Wilderness
Interzone
I remember nothing
Encore
Atmosphere written on the setlist, but they may have played Dead Souls instead?
Warsaw
Failures
Transmission
Love will tear us apart