MOVEMENT TOUR 2013 LIVE IN DUBLIN
by PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT

Hook reinvigorates an old New Order album

By Rick Hines, Aug. 23, 2019

The album is similar to other recent Peter Hook releases: a live recording featuring a full length album performance from the Joy Division/early New Order catalog. The album is filled out with a generous helping of assorted popular and obscure songs from the era. The group he's assembled plays with a raw, loose power that will be familiar to anyone who's heard live Joy Division recordings. Surprisingly, Hook manages to channel a good amount of Ian Curtis' spirit on most of the material.

What I want to point out here is how Hook and company have not just re-created New Order's Movement album, they have actually transcended the original source material. The original album is relentless in its cold, mechanistic rhythms, and disembodied vocals float low in the mix and hard to hear. New vocalist Bernard Sumner was still channeling Ian Curtis, not having yet developed his own unique voice. Curtis was dead, and you can hear the singer drifting off into the abyss, his words obscured by the suffocating rhythms, angular guitars and synthesizer bursts. It's the sound of looking into the void and leaning over perhaps a little too far.

In Hook's new interpretation, the vocals are pushed up front and delivered with the kind of dark emotion that Ian Curtis surely would have brought to the album had he lived. Only now, it's not the sound of someone being sucked into the void, it's the sound of someone who's crossed the void and lived to tell the tale. The band breathes emotion into the mechanical rhythms and the songs surge with a power you can hear Hook respond to as he sings with confidence and, yes, joy.

Movement was a hesitant step from a band in transition, no longer Joy Division, but not quite New Order. I can't help but feel we've finally heard that hesitant step develop into a fully-formed artistic statement, a fitting goodbye to Ian Curtis that introduces the musical vocabulary of New Order.

I highly recommend this to anyone who's a fan of Joy Division, New Order, or Peter Hook. The performance of Movement alone ranks up with the best recordings by these artists. Add in all the other songs, and it's a real feast.