Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up (Entry #8): Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division

You may have thought this series was dead after a nearly three month long absence, but nope! Folks, it's high time for another edition of....

DOUGLAS LAMAN GETS A TUNE-UP

ENTRY #8:  Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division

Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up is a series of essays wherein Douglas Laman listens to an album of music he's never fully listened to before (though he may have heard one or two songs from it) and writes up his brief thoughts on it.

I've had an incredible run of highly enjoyable albums on my Douglas Laman Gets A Tune Up column, to the point that the various albums I've consumed for this feature have become regular fixtures of my go-to music rotation (especially The Dead Kennedy's, David Bowie and The Velvet Underground). There was bound to be a misfire in here somewhere and alas, such an entity has come in Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division, a collection of music that has generated widespread acclaim, often being called one of the best albums of all-time in the genre of rock music, but Unknown Pleasures just couldn't quite resonate with me, though there are elements here worth praising.



The main issue I've got with Unknown Pleasures is just how much of the music blends together, the best tracks here (like I Remember Nothing) go for bold approaches in the lyrics and execution that allow them to feel truly alive compared to the rest of the album that feels like it stays on one note for far too long. The first song on the album, Disorder, has some good guitar playing and unusual sounds that occur late into the song are interesting, but it feels like its topic of finding solace from the chaos in drugs has been done better and with more vibrant personality. The word "feeling" is repeated a few times as a way to close out the tune, which feels ironic to me given how much I felt this track was lacking in emotion.

You'd be forgiven for thinking Day of the Lord was simply another verse of the song Disorder given just how much the two tracks sound alike. The song gets better as it goes along once its nihilistic lyrics kick in and Ian Curtis belting out "When will it end?" gets more and more haunting each time he says it, though the accompanying rock n' roll instrumental sections of the song never quite reach their full potential. Next up comes Candidate, which takes about 14 seconds before drums grooving with the strumming of a guitar transition into a more psychedelic influenced track that breaks up the more repetitive nature of the two tracks that have preceded it.

Candidate is handily the most distinctive of the first four tracks of the album as the fourth song in Unknown Pleasures, Insight, once again just feels like, aside from the vocal presence of space lasers, more of the first two songs again. This is actually a good example of when a critic has to recognize how much subjectivity there is when examining art; it's no wonder many people love this album because I'm sure many adore the type of music that all but one of the first four tracks of Unknown Pleasures thrive on and thus the album works like gangbusters for them. Because the rock n' roll drumming and guitar playing mixed with melancholy somber lyrics just couldn't click for me, that meant all but one of the first four songs on Unknown Pleasures ended up coming up short, not because they're inherently bad or without any artistic merit, but simply because the sound and vibe these tunes possessed just wasn't on my wavelength.

Things don't become all that much more varied as the album progresses, which left me listening to the album admiring a number of more heightened elements scattered throughout the album (like an odd but attention-grabbing bit of vocal work that opens the song New Dawn Fades), but also feeling like a good chunk of the drums and guitar work was repetitive, though the vocals of Ian Curtis are probably the best part of the entire album, the guy is able to make relatable woe vocally engrossing.  About halfway through the album we do get one of the best tracks here, She's Lost Control, which allows the band to slip into a more high-energy sound that's easy to bob your head to.

Another high-quality track can be found in the closing tune of the entire album, I Remember Nothing, which may be the most thought-provoking piece of music here given its soulful lyrics that seem to echo across your ears that are paired up with a minimalist instrumental accompaniment. If the reaction  I had to a song like I Remember Nothing is how everyone else on the planet seems to have reacted to all the tunes on Unknown Pleasures, then I can see why it has generated so much hype. I may have found the music of Unknown Pleasures to be a bit too "samey" (for lack of a better word) when taken as a whole album, but don't let that discourage you from checking out the highly-acclaimed work in here as I'll also be the first to admit there are still facets here very much worth praising.

Next Time On Douglas Laman Gets A Tune-Up: Douglas Laman is going to be taken into the city to see a marching band perform in My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade.