Tackling the back catalogues of Joy Division and New Order is a tricky task, but Peter Hook & The Light pay a touching tribute to Salford’s favourite sons at Cardiff’s Tramshed. Arriving onstage at 7pm prompt, the band launch immediately into cult classic 586, which New Order debuted at the opening of the Haçienda in 1982.
The short New Order set concludes with the chart-topping classic Blue Monday, and if it wasn’t for the early start time a packed Tramshed could really have been transformed into the iconic Manchester nightclub. With singles Everything’s Gone Green and Crystal, plus early gems Denial and Chosen Time, sandwiched in between, chatter is kept to a minimum – The Light prefers to let the music do the talking, with much ground to cover.
For more than a decade, Hook has committed himself to retell the histories of both bands. In 2015, he performed the entire 47-song oeuvre of Joy Division in chronological order in Ian Curtis’ hometown on the 35th anniversary of the singer’s death. Here, he replicates every note of the two albums they left behind, Unknown Pleasures and Closer. Darkness descends and summons ghosts of Manchester’s industrial past, starting with Disorder and a sinister-sounding Day of the Lords.
Hook’s baritone better suits the Joy Division songs than the higher register required for the New Order tunes. Pounding basslines were intrinsic to the former – not least on She’s Lost Control – and that sound is further bolstered by Hook’s son Jack Bates as second bassist, while his old Monaco bandmate David Potts adds searing guitar notes.
Finishing Unknown Pleasures with I Remember Nothing, the band re-emerge with Hook’s ominous greeting of “Welcome to the Atrocity Exhibition.” The robotic drumming signals the opening track of Closer. With its refrain of “This is the way, step inside,” it feels like the spectre of Ian Curtis is present.
An uncompromising, quickfire salvo of A Means To An End, Heart & Soul and Twenty-Four Hours engulfs the room like a cloak, while the filmic finale of The Eternal and Decades captures the more synthesised side of Joy Division. A spine-tingling encore rendition of Atmosphere is followed by fan favourite Digital and debut single Transmission before the inevitable, unofficial anthem of Manchester, Love Will Tear Us Apart.
Peter Hook & The Light, Tramshed, Cardiff, Sat 22 Apr
words NEIL COLLINS photos RAYMOND THOMSON + STUART WESTWOOD
