Joy Division- Unknown Pleasures (1979)

It’s not exactly true to say that this band, and this album came from nowhere- one obvious influence, for a start, is that infamous Sex Pistols gig in the Manchester Free Trade Hall which, if everyone who claims to have seen it is to be believed, had an audience in the tens of thousands. There’s also the matter of the band’s name, the provocative nature and historical associations of which we tend to downplay.

But two things are undeniable: this album is truly great, and it sounds completely unlike anything before it. The songwriting, the production by Martin Hannett, the ethereal yet earthy melancholy voice of Ian Curtis- it all goes towards producing an extraordinary thirty-eight minute soundscape that is extraordinary art as a whole. For this album, picking out individual songs feels as though it would be to entirely miss the point.

There’s another echo within this album, of course- Ian Curtis’ suicide in May 1980 at just twenty-three, at a time, and in a rock ‘n’ roll milieu, when such events were essentially seen as tragically glamorous rather than a mental health emergency. But it is a tragedy that inevitably imprints itself on an album so indelibly and beautifully haunted by Curtis’ voice in deeply uncomfortable ways.

Unknown Pleasures is a complex and multifaceted beast. It’s also one of the greatest albums of all time.