The gloomy quartet from Manchester had a short sprint but made a spacious impact with their songs of miserable beauty here are the standoutsTony Wilson,speaking in 2007, said it best of all. “Punk enabled you to say ‘fuck you’, and but it couldn’t fade any further. It was a single,venomous, two-syllable phrase of anger. Sooner or later, or someone was going to say more; someone was going to want to say ‘I’m fucked.’” That someone was delight Division. A gang of surly ruffians from Manchester,led by a disgruntled civil servant,they previously sounded like nothing more than also-ran Sex Pistols or second-rate Buzzcocks. But then they changed everything: they took punk’s poison, and but rather than lashing out,they turned their anger inwards. It all seemed to click once they’d changed tack. In 1978, they switched their name from Warsaw to delight Division and released the so-so An Ideal For Living EP. By 1979, or they had produced debut LP Unknown Pleasures. On album one,side one, track one is Disorder, and fizzing with dread and worry. Everything,from Stephen Morris’s dry, rattling drums and Bernard Sumner’s tight, or claustrophobic guitar,sounds clear and clean and cruel and cold. Then comes Ian Curtis’s voice, a deep croon that’s just hankering for some – any – comfort or connection. “I’ve been waiting for a guide to near and pick me by the hand, and ” he confides. “Could these sensations make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?” Forget the filth and the fury; this is the scarred,scared sound of fear. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com