Unknown Pleasures (1979) Joy Division

Written by Meenakshi Nirmalan

We’ve all seen the Unknown Pleasures album cover, regardless of whether we’re familiar with Joy Division’s music. The image is everywhere, from T-shirts, to posters (I have both) and is easily amongst the most bootlegged album covers of all time. It’s an image of a CP-1919 radio pulsar. Found in a scientific journal, it was originally black on white, however, the band reversed the colour scheme to white on black for their album. Before I listened to Joy Division, I felt that the image was so ubiquitous that it stopped communicating anything at all. Any sort of message there once might have been, seemed to have been made unintelligible, lost in the language of signs. Despite this, I decided to check Joy Division out when I was fourteen. The first song I listened to was Love Will Tear Us Apart, which isn’t on Unknown Pleasures. I didn’t like it on the first listen, as I’ve often found with music I currently love. I felt Ian Curtis’ vocals were too smooth, too mellow, in comparison to the music I was into at the time. However, I decided to listen to Unknown Pleasures when I was sixteen and absolutely loved it. I’ve changed my mind about the album cover too; the sleek monochrome waves are iconic and the pulsar image feels apt. It captures the album's desolate and futuristic sound, resembling a transmission from space. Unknown Pleasures was released in the same decade my parents were born, the seventies, but both the image and the sound feel way ahead of its time.

The band formed in Salford, after bassist Peter Hook and guitarist Bernard Sumner attended a Sex Pistols gig. Joy Division’s sound is interesting, considering their genesis coincided with the explosion of British punk. Whilst punk feels angry, loud and rebellious, Joy Division has a different ambience to their contemporaries, paving the way for post-punk. Unknown Pleasures feels melancholic yet not without an energetic current surging through it. Interzone is the only song with a sound that resembles traditional punk. It’s up-tempo, powered by vibrant drumming and an energetic guitar riff, all grounded together by bass. Lyrically, it feels less pensive compared to the rest of Unknown Pleasures. Hook sings ‘I walked through the city limits / (someone talked me in to try and do it) / Attracted by some force within it / (had to close my eyes to get close to it)’. The tone feels liminal and the overall feel of the track has always reminded me of Gang of Four’s Damaged Goods, released in the same year. The only strikingly post-punk element to this track is the way Curtis’ vocals are layered; there’s a slight overlap between phrases, when he sings the lines in parentheses, giving the track an echoey feel. However, the whole idea of call and response feels very in line with punk. Ultimately, since both punk and post-punk were pioneered during a similar period, they’d inevitably bounce off each other, in terms of inspiration.

The thing with British punk is that a lot of the different components of the music blur together, reinforcing the overall shape of the sound. Imagine a canvas, covered in thick paint and visible brush strokes, arresting shades of reds and blacks, the occasional dash of yellow. That’s punk to me. Post-punk would utilise less of the canvas, yet still be painted in the same colour scheme. There would be finer lines, yet not without a jagged edge to it. The soundscape of Unknown Pleasures feels open and airy. I can isolate and focus on each instrument without losing track of its trajectory. One of my favourite aspects of this is that the bass is really brought out; Peter Hook does a brilliant job. You hear the bass’ lucidity right off the bat in the album’s intro, Disorder. Even though the track’s bassline features many consecutively repeated notes there’s beauty in its simplicity. The guitar and bass work in tandem on this track; neither one seems to feel more prominent than the other. Lyrically, Curtis highlights a lack of direction: ‘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?’ It has the disillusionment of traditional British punk but doesn’t have the brashness. It feels more resigned, gloomier; Curtis captures the feeling of life passing by you, without truly living it. This is underlined, as the song closes with him repeating, ‘I’ve got the spirit, but lose the feeling’, setting the despairing tone for the rest of the album.

Along with Disorder, New Dawn Fades is one of my favourite songs. The middle section of the album is consistently strong. Again, the bassline is simple, yet prominent, upholding the structure of the song. The opening guitar riff is great; it feels like it would make a good bassline in itself. It’s always reminded me of the revving of an engine, giving the song a steady sense of momentum. New Dawn Fades has my favourite line from Unknown Pleasures; Curtis sings ‘directionless, so plain to see / a loaded gun won’t set you free / so you say’. I love the plainness of the language yet the ambiguity in its meaning. The last three words change the entire meaning of the phrase before it. It doesn’t negate it, necessarily, simply obscures it, distorts it, leaving it more open to interpretation. As the song progresses, he sings louder, more passionately, poignantly contrasting the aloof nature of the lyrics. ‘It was me, waiting for me / Hoping for something more / Me, seeing me this time / Hoping for something else’. The vagueness builds to the revelation of  ‘me, waiting for me,’ underlining feelings of disconnect from one’s own self. Curtis conveys the feeling of getting older but not feeling any wiser. She’s Lost Control is also a brilliant track, illuminating similar themes. The song is about a woman Curtis met, who suffered from epileptic seizures. Coincidentally, Curtis also suffered from the same condition. He later found out that she passed away. The encounter with the woman left its mark on him, compelling him to write a song about it. The guitar riff is twangy and feels other-worldly at times. This is tempered by the drums; they sound coldly precise. The soundscape feels spacious and expansive, coloured in exactly to the right degree. 

The outro, I Remember Nothing, is the slowest, most sparse song on Unknown Pleasures. The bass is echoey and murky, yet with a crisp clarity. The song’s drone-like sound gives it a doomy and despairing ambience. It’s evocative, yet elusive. Curtis sings ‘Me in my own world, and you there beside / The gaps are enormous, we stare from each side, / We were strangers for way too long’, underlining how physical proximity doesn’t equate to emotional closeness. The sense of disconnect and disorder throughout the whole album is amplified in the album’s outro. There’s something Sisyphean about this track; I can’t help but feel like I’ve been thrust back to square one. By the time you’ve finished the album, its meaning remains unknown to you. Still, there’s pleasure in this: you’ve never known any different. Curtis conveys a state of limbo, perpetually waiting for an epiphany, being neither here nor there. The failure to realise you’re the only person that can make life happen for yourself.