Joy Division: all of their songs, ranked!
Failures has a very Joy Division title, but the sound is sub-Raw Power-era Stooges. Meanwhile, the fact that Ian Curtis sounds about 13 years old underlines the slightly amateur air. With the best will in the world, you would have needed powers of clairvoyance to work out that its authors would turn out to be epochal.
46. Warsaw (1978)
Unavailable for a decade after Ian Curtis’s suicide, Joy Division’s debut EP An Ideal for Living developed a mythic aura that its contents don’t warrant. Warsaw sounds like the band they were – a primitive Mancunian response to punk – rather than the band they would become.
45. At a Later Date (1978)
Better remembered for Bernard Sumner’s ill-advised opening shout of “You all forgot Rudolph Hess” than the song itself, Joy Division’s contribution to the Short Circuit: Live at the Electric Circus compilation has a certain power – the band had taken the stage shortly after a fight with members of the Drones – but it’s not a great song: note Curtis’s raw, unformed vocals.
44. No Love Lost (1978)
Also from An Ideal for Living, No Love Lost took inspiration from a novella about brothels in Nazi concentration camps that also give Joy Division their name: it’s got a certain dark, schlocky power, but little spark.
43. Leaders Of Men (1978)
The solitary track on An Ideal for Living that points towards the future, Leaders of Men is not a great song – you can hear a faint echo of Bowie’s Queen Bitch in its bridge – but the echoing drums and jagged guitar presage the sound Joy Division would subsequently pursue.
42. Something Must Break (1979)
As with a number of outtakes posthumously released on the compilation Still, you can see why Joy Division abandoned Something Must Break. Recorded at the same session as Transmission, it is off-key and strangely tinny, features a reedy garage rock organ, and is notable mainly for Stephen Morris’s hyperactive drumming.
41. The Drawback (1978)
In May 1978, Joy Division recorded an album’s worth of material, ostensibly for RCA. Most of it was subsequently rerecorded, save for The Drawback, and you can see why: its stop-start punkiness feels lightweight and indebted to Buzzcocks.
40. Glass (1978)
The weaker of the two songs Joy Division contributed to A Factory Sample, Glass feels transitional. The ghost of punk is still lurking, with a Rotten-ish keen to Curtis’s vocals, and Martin Hannett’s production adds a weird sense of space to the sound, but it’s one of their less memorable songs.
39. Walked in Line (1979)
Another Unknown Pleasures outtake that turned up on Still, Walked in Line has a very Transmission-esque guitar solo and heavily compressed Hannett production but still sounds unfinished, with something distinctly tentative about Curtis’s vocal. Perhaps they abandoned it on account of the lyrics: a depiction of goose-stepping soldiers ambiguous enough to cause trouble.
38. As You Said (1980)
Released on a flexidisc alongside Komakino, the influence of Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express hangs heavy over this electronic instrumental. Essentially improvised synthesizer over a rhythm track, it is interesting rather than essential.
37. Incubation (1980)
You can see how Incubation worked as a powerful set-opening instrumental onstage, its role during Joy Division gigs in 1980, but the studio version reveals it as basically a Transmission redux – similar bassline and guitar – albeit with stompier, glam-inspired drums.
36. Ice Age (1979)
Proof that Joy Division never entirely left their roots behind: at the same session that produced the peerless Atmosphere, they recorded Ice Age, which would have sounded like a straightforward punky thrash were it not for the bizarre drum track, which lends an unsettling off-kilter feel.
35. The Kill (1979)
A good-quality leftover from their debut album that eventually turned up on Still, The Kill suggests the version of Unknown Pleasures that Peter Hook and Bernard Sumner initially said they would have rather released: more visceral and punky than producer Hannett’s futuristic vision.
34. The Sound of Music (1980)
As harrowing and oppressive as anything off Closer, The Sound of Music was debuted on a 1979 John Peel session then recorded again during the sessions for the Love Will Tear Us Apart single. It is tough going – the lyrics are utterly hopeless; the voice singing them sounds authentically desperate – but as a portrait of a mind at the end of its tether, it is horribly compelling.
33. Novelty (1979)
In one of the weirder twists in their career, Joy Division once attempted to record a cover of NF Porter’s northern soul stomper Keep On Keepin’ On. They eventually reworked it into Interzone, but there is a distinct northern backbeat to Novelty, too. Tucked away on the B-side of Transmission, it also boasted one of the band’s sweetest melodies.
32. Interzone (1979)
On which Joy Division improbably transform the aforementioned soul stomper Keep On Keepin’ On into a ragged homage to William Burroughs, sung by Peter Hook, with Curtis providing impenetrable backing vocals.
31. These Days (1980)
The flipside of Love Will Tear Us Apart in every sense, These Days reflects on a collapsing relationship not with sorrow, but cynicism and anger (“Took threats and abuse until I learnt the part”). It tempers its poppy lushness with starker, harder music, although the burbling synth that runs throughout seems to prefigure New Order’s later direction.
30. From Safety to Where …? (1979)
Remarkably sparse – its bass and drums intermittently streaked with densely effected guitar – From Safety to Where …? has a lyric that could be about smalltown claustrophobia, or Joy Division’s decision to step beyond the increasingly codified confines of punk: “Just passing through until we reach the next stage / Should we move on or stay safely away?”
29. Exercise One (1979)
You get the feeling Exercise One might have been intended as an atmospheric opening track for Unknown Pleasures before being usurped by the more direct Disorder. Either way, it still sounds amazing: a brooding storm of guitar noise and thumping drums with Curtis’s voice distant and swathed in cavernous echo.
28. The Only Mistake (1979)
Arguably the best of the previously unreleased songs on Still, it seems faintly surprising that Joy Division chose to leave The Only Mistake off Unknown Pleasures. It would have fitted perfectly: the sound of Curtis’s vocal fighting for space with its sheets of guitar noise – and occasionally losing – is potent, and fits with the lyrical depiction of suffocating relationship woe.
27. I Remember Nothing (1979)
You can hear the influence of Pere Ubu’s Sentimental Journey – with its smashed crockery sound effects – on the final track of Unknown Pleasures. It is a bold choice of closer: no melody, the song barely there at all, and everything resting on Curtis’s pained vocal delivery and the obliquely disturbing imagery.
26. Komakino (1980)
Blessed with an oddly funky riff, Komakino feels distinctly like a relative of Closer’s opening track Atrocity Exhibition, in both its title – which translates as “coma cinema” – and the intense, thundering rhythm of Morris’s drums. The lyrics, meanwhile, cover similar emotional territory to that found on Closer: “How can I find the right way to control all the conflicts inside, all the problems beside?”
25. In a Lonely Place (1980)
Finally released in 2011, Joy Division’s rough rehearsal version of a song subsequently recorded by New Order is, as Peter Hook noted, “too much”. The muffled sound heightens the mood of oppressive darkness until it is intolerable, and the final verse – which literally depicts a hanging – suggests that however tempting it is to envisage a different, happier outcome to Joy Division’s story, it was never on the cards.
24. Wilderness (1979)
It is the mark of what a great album Unknown Pleasures is that even its lesser tracks sound spectacular, Wilderness among them. It takes a simple garage rock riff into an entirely unexpected space – enveloped by cavernous echo – and ends by ratcheting up the emotional temperature, repeating the line “they had tears in their eyes” with a mounting sense of alarm.
23. Colony (1980)
Inspired by Franz Kafka’s short story In the Penal Colony – about a machine that tortures and executes condemned men, but grants them a religious epiphany in the process – Colony’s music takes a Stooges-esque riff and disrupts it with an unsettlingly jerky stop-start rhythm.
22. Passover (1980)
Sonically Closer’s starkest track, Passover stares unflinchingly at the chaos of Curtis’s personal life – his marriage, “brutally taking its time” to collapse completely, his relationship