Some thoughts on Joy Division/New Order
When thinking of Ian Curtis disbanding Joy Division May 18th 1980 by hanging himself the end of The Doors comes to mind.
Jim Morrison died under never fully explained circumstances probably on an overdose in Paris in the spring of 1971. Their end is not the only similarity between them. I doubt that Morrison was an epileptic like Curtis but nevertheless when you see him in some live videos it becomes clear that this guy was mentally insane. The way he danced and did not look at the public shows that he was on an extreme ego trip. Same is true for Curtis. Even the way Curtis sang with this grave low baritone voice is very reminiscent of Morrison. Only difference is that even if The Doors music is quite dark for the US of the late sixties it is incredibly sunny compared to Joy Division. The Doors were from LA and that is not exactly a very sombre place. Manchester on the other hand...

Very soon after Curtis suicide the remaining band members decided to continue under the name of New Order. After the release of the terribly foreboding Love Will Tear Us Apart which Curtis had written shortly before his death New Order toured the US substituting Joy Division who had planned that tour already. In the beginning Bernard Sumner, the guitarist and singer of NO tried to sing with the same mannered grave voice as Curtis. But very soon NO followed a totally different path. I think they did this musical U-turn consciously. JD’s sound had been dooming and dark and the lyrics had been depressing and devastating. NO created dance music relying very much on electronics. The drum machine and the synthesizer play an important role in their music. And the lyrics sung by Sumner in a boy’s voice are devoid of any meaning. They consist of banalities and platitudes. They just sound nice and fit very well to the sunny shallow music. I think that this is intended. The remaining members of JD decided maybe unconsciously that they could not continue with the serious music JD had created. That music with those sad and pessimistic philosophical lyrics had been a dead end. It had cost the life of one band member. They had invested too much of themselves in that music. To no avail except Curtis death. Therefore they reinvented themselves completely. They tried to make perfect dance pop music, the most superficial kind of music imaginable. JD had been an album and a live band. NO was just a singles band. The lp records and the live concerts were rubbish.

Somehow both bands are great. JD as a legacy of punk and probably the most influential indie band (together with the Smiths) after Velvet Underground. NO as the New Wave band which opened the way for Techno.
The new album of NO is great as I said before. I would say it is their first real album. Only track 9 is a bit weak. The rest is not on par with their best singles but it is amazingly consistent slightly melancholic dance music with the typical NO sound. And the lyrics are totally useless again. I think it is an art to write hollow lyrics which sound good to the music. NO have succeeded in this discipline again. I was inspired to these ramblings by this really bad negative review of the new album which misses the point completely.