September 19, 2013

Peter Hook and The Light played Paradise Rock Club – 9/10

Former Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook is up to his old tricks again. Namely, he’s touring classic albums by his prior bands with The Light, a crew consisting of members of Hook’s Moncaco project and his son, Jack Bates. After tours which brought the Joy Division classics Unknown Pleasures and Closer around the world, Hook has now turned his attention toward Movement and Power, Corruption & Lies, the first two LPs from New Order. The U.S. tour began last week right here in Boston.

Many a claim has been made against Hook doing any of this. His iconic bass lines are an integral part of every one of these records, but he sang no lead vocals apart from two tracks on Movement, and his former bandmates in both projects, Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris, are nowhere to be found. Along with Gillian Gilbert and a replacement Hooky, they’ve spent the last few years reuniting New Order on their own.

The rather unique history of these musicians provides a bit of context and justification for Hook’s undertaking, however. The 1980 suicide of vocalist Ian Curtis brought Joy Division to an end, and Hook, Sumner and Morris were left to form a new project with none of the three being particularly ready to take on the role of a frontman. Vocal duties eventually fell to Sumner, who found it easier to sing while playing guitar than Hook did while playing bass. New Order remained a product of collaboration rather than a project under Sumner’s direction, and by that logic, Hook has as much a right to tour these songs as any of the band’s other members.

Hook’s claim to the material is strengthened by the fact that he and his band play it quite well. Bates trades off with his father on the songs’ prominent bass lines, while drummer Paul Kehoe, keyboardist Andy Poole and guitarist David Potts fill out the arrangements admirably. The band sounded louder and punchier than New Order proper did at their outdoor Boston gig over the summer, though that can certainly be attributed in part to the dynamics of a club versus those of a pavilion on the water. The club atmosphere felt especially fitting, given that such venues were the ones New Order likely played when this material was first released.

The show opened with a set by “Slaves of Venus,” which turned out to be Hook and company running through a short set of Joy Division songs, much to the delight of the early arrivals. “She Lost Control,” “Digital” “Wilderness” and others were treated with tight and faithful renditions, with Hook convincingly recalling Curtis’ unconventional vocals.

The Movement and Power, Corruption & Lies set served the dual purpose of revitalizing New Order’s oft-overlooked debut and enthusiastically revisiting its celebrated sophomore release. Movement has long felt like the sound of a band in flux, still trying to sound like Joy Division without having developed an identity of its own. It sounds unfocused in recorded form, but Hook and the band did breathe some life into the songs as live arrangements. Still, the vibrant, catchy Power, Corruption & Lies tracks couldn’t help but overshadow their predecessors. “Age of Consent” sounds positively anthemic with Hook or Sumner at the helm, and the rest of the album fared just as well.

No one can or should make the claim that seeing Hook and the Light or the current iteration of New Order is hearing those songs performed exactly as they should be. Neither recreation of the original has it all down perfectly, but that’s not to say there aren’t merits to both. New Order boast the advantage of having more actual members of New Order, but Hook brings a certain youthful energy back to the music that works well for these club tours. For both the old school New Order fans and the members of my generation of late discoverers in the audience, it seemed a satisfying way to revisit some old favorites.