With the death of Ian Curtis, everything ground to a halt for Joy Division. Unable to continue in the vein of songs like "Komakino" and "Decades," unable to embark on their American tour, unsure of where to go after this sudden catastrophe, but unwilling to just give up music and disappear, at that time the remaining members of the band could only finish what was already started; their first release as New Order was the single "Ceremony" with B-side "In a Lonely Place." These are Ian Curtis' last poems, and the music for them had already been written, but Joy Division had not had time to release them, and so they came out under the New Order name with Bernard Sumner on vocals. Sumner doesn't do a bad job, really, bringing just the right restraint to them, but all he succeeds in doing is making Curtis' absence felt. Amidst the tender serenity of "Ceremony" and the haunted plains of "In a Lonely Place," not hearing Ian's familiar voice is heartbreaking. Needless to say, among Joy Division's followers these songs have attained the status of lost treasures. The most valuable aspect of the big Joy Division box set Heart and Soul is the presence of two low-fidelity rehearsal recordings of these very songs, filled with tape hiss, ending abruptly, but with Ian on vocals. For New Order, however, this was only a first step.
The Everything's Gone Green EP is the sound of New Order's road back from Joy Division's sound. The dance elements are there already - the jumping, processed synthesizers in the title track and "Procession" - but Sumner's singing still carries traces of Curtis. Due to this, the songs still hint at the striking beauty Joy Division had glimpsed, but Sumner's lyrics are really fairly inexpressive, though Peter Hook's bass in "Procession" sounds like many early Joy Division songs ("The Kill" in particular). Even New Order's breakthrough "Blue Monday" still retains enough of Joy Division in it to make one think Ian Curtis might start singing any moment, despite sounding already fundamentally different.
It's "Temptation" where New Order really became New Order - some loud drums, a keyboard undercurrent, a warm and memorable guitar jangle, and of course, Sumner's affectionate singing, filled with irrepressible joy at simply being alive even while "bolts from above hit the people down below." New Order's main theme is born here - Sumner hints that his life might just have undergone some sort of upheaval, but cares not a bit about it, asserting simply, "I'll find myself as I go home." His songs often have a solitary air, but find that solitude to be a cause for happiness. After all, when one goes outside and sees a beautifully clear winter day, with frost on the ground but nary a cloud in the sky, who really cares about angst, problems, and anything other people might have done?
A few more songs, a few more milestones - "Confusion" uses scratching and gruff hip-hop-style backing vocals, "Thieves Like Us" features keyboards as a lead instrument, but "The Perfect Kiss" tops all of them. Sumner sings an ambiguous, strange song about danger and disenchantment (with a chorus that affirms his belief in "a land of love," of course) to a masterful, layered rhythm track, and at the song's very end, there's a veritable explosion of sound, as the celestial lead thunders up and down over Hook's rolling waves of bass. A more spontaneous expression of carefree delight is difficult to imagine.
Themes of danger and crime run through "Subculture," "Shellshock" and "State of the Nation," but Sumner is no malicious outsider, but more of a seeker of harmless thrills who favours a pleasant walk about town at night. It's hilarious to hear him assert that "Another day goes by and ALL I do is cry" in a completely non-lachrymose tone of voice. It's "True Faith," however, that is the pinnacle of the first disc, and doubtless a pinnacle of the genre. Sumner returns to his favourite theme, singing with great warmth about waking up to see the "morning sun." Lost human connections and uncertainty about the future are addressed with the lines "That's the price that we all pay" and "I guess there's just no way of knowing," respectively, and nothing more is made of them. This is what every great New Order song always comes back to - the simple realization that the morning sun, observed in solitude, is exactly what happiness is, and everything else can be disposed of with absolute calm.
The second disc, aside from featuring "In a Lonely Place" and the rest of the Everything's Gone Green EP, doesn't have as much to offer. Five of the tracks on it are remixes of songs from the first disc, and of these, only "Shame of the Nation" is interesting, since it's not an instrumental remix but actually an entirely different take on the song that strips away the noisier moments and adds unintentionally funny backing vocals. However, the disc also contains the gorgeous "Lonesome Tonight," a winsome song that steers closer to the "rock" end of New Order's dance-rock scale than anything else on the album, as well as the dense instrumental "Murder" and the dramatic, compelling "1963." The last of these is especially great, showing Sumner's storytelling as well as vocal talents.
Substance is an excellent album, a perfect introduction to New Order for those unfamiliar with them, a fine compilation for fans (only four songs on here can be found on studio albums, though their Substance versions are significantly different), a document of the completely unexpected, triumphant rebirth of an already great band, and a landmark in both rock and roll and dance music (soon to become electronica). It's creative, infectious, and above all a lot of fun (how else could one describe moments like the ending of "The Perfect Kiss," really?). It isn't Joy Division, but nothing is.
