The ramp-up to Anton Corbijn’s stark film about the troubled life and eventual suicide of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis began back in September, when Rhino released a deluxe-vinyl box set, featuring 180-gram vinyl editions of the band’s two proper studio albums, Unknown Pleasures and Closer, as well as the posthumous double album Still. That set was only available through rhino.com at a collector’s price of $199.98. Now, with the film hitting theaters, all three of those albums, along with a Control soundtrack, have hit the shelves with plenty of the expected extras. Here’s a rundown of what the new versions have to offer, as well as a peek at the soundtrack:ALBUMUnknown Pleasures
ORIGINAL RELEASE July 1979
KEY TRACKS “She’s Lost Control”; “New Dawn Fades”; “Shadowplay”
THE STORY By 1977, the Joy Division line-up was set, with guitarist Bernard Sumner and bassist Peter Hook recruiting fellow–Sex Pistols fan and vocalist Ian Curtis. When drummer Stephen Morris came on board, the group began recording under the name Warsaw (live Warsaw bootlegs abound). But once they commenced their association with Tony Wilson and his Factory label, the name Joy Division was born. Initially thought of as a punk band, Joy Division’s use of mood, texture, and, most important, synths set them apart from the rabble, and the term “post-punk” was born. Yes, the tempos on songs such as the desperate “Day of the Lords” are sub-punk velocity, but the guitars are raw and visceral and the vocals deeply haunting.
BONUS MATERIAL The new Rhino collectors edition includes a second live disc that documents a show at Factory on July 13, 1979, right around the time the band was recording Unknown Pleasures.
ALBUMCloser
ORIGINAL RELEASE August 1980
KEY TRACKS “Heart and Soul”; “Isolation”; “A Means to an End”
THE STORY On the strength of the reaction to Unknown Pleasures and in anticipation of its follow-up, Closer, Joy Division were preparing to make landfall in the US. Closer was completed in March of 1980. Meanwhile, the single “Love Will Tear Us Apart” was slowly making an underground impact. The song eventually hit the UK charts, but not until after Curtis took his own life on May 18, 1980 — just two days before the band was scheduled to fly to the US for the first time. The tribal drums and scraping guitar that kick off Closer’s first track, “Atrocity Exhibition,” reflect the more experimental side of Joy Division, while the electronic beats, shimmering synths, and pulsing melodic bass (a Hook trademark) on tracks like “Isolation” and “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” which, sadly, is not on the album, hint at what Joy Division would become after Curtis’s death: New Order. It’s become something of macabre pastime trying to decode the lyrics to songs like “Eternal,” looking for clues as to what was going on in Curtis’s mind as he approached suicide.
BONUS MATERIAL The Rhino reissue includes a second disc recorded live at the University of London Union on February 8, 1980. It includes the one track that’s always seemed conspicuously absent from Closer, a raw version of “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” along with 11 other tracks.
ALBUMStill
ORIGINAL RELEASE October 1981
KEY TRACKS “Sister Ray” (live); “Glass”; “Dead Souls”
THE STORY Originally released as a double album, Still is an odds-and-sods collection of studio outtakes, partially completed tracks, and live recordings of a show that took place just a few days before Curtis’s death. It’s worth just hearing Curtis joke, as Joy Division’s grinding take on the Velvet’s “Sister Ray” comes to a close, “You should hear our version of ‘Louie Louie.’ ” There are other great tracks here: “Something Must Break” is a wrenching anti-anthem, and “Walked in Line” bristles with paranoia.
BONUS MATERIAL The Rhino reissue compiles all of Still’s original tracks, and then adds an extra disc that features eight songs recorded on February 20, 1980, at Town Hall, High Wycombe, as well as six sound-check numbers, including “Isolation,” “Ice Age,” and “Disorder.”
ALBUMMusic from the Motion Picture Control
RELEASE DATE October 2007
KEY TRACKS “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (Joy Division); “Boredom” (Buzzcocks); “Atmosphere” (Joy Division); “What Goes On” (Velvet Undergound)
THE STORY As a soundtrack, Control fulfills its purpose by bringing together Joy Division’s biggest “hit” with a cover of a Joy Division tune (“Shadowplay”) by a contemporary band (Killers), and also includes a few stray bits of dialogue from the film to introduce tracks by New Order (particularly the argument about management that precedes “Hypnosis”). But it also does a nice job of setting the mood for the film by including tracks that influenced Joy Division — the VU’s “What Goes On,” Iggy Pop’s “Sister Midnight,” and a couple by David Bowie. The version of Joy Division’s “Atmosphere,” a song about the tensions in Curtis’s marriage, is devastating. Not exactly a pick-me-up, but Control at least balances the darkness of the Curtis tale with a little light.
