Warsaw - When Joy Division Were Punk

It's 1994, the world has by now absorbed the explosive impact of grunge, and while Nirvana and their album “Nevermind” are already regarded as classics, Kurt Cobain takes his own life, joining the ranks of rock's great artists bent on self-destruction. That same year sees the release of Warsaw, an invaluable resource for musicologists and for every fan of Joy Division wanting to understand the band's origins, back when it still went by the name of the famous Bowie–Eno composition from the album “Low”. So while grunge was falling apart with Cobain's death, Warsaw allowed listeners to rediscover a still little-known chapter in the origins of one of its direct forebears: punk. Before the release of this "unofficial" anthology put out by Movieplay Gold, there had in fact been very few chances to hear the music of Warsaw, who were very much part of that movement, short of stumbling upon extremely rare and hard-to-find bootlegs.

The collection is actually made up of two parts, both of considerable importance. The first consists of the recording the band made in the studio on May 3 and 4, 1978, which was meant to become the first Joy Division album, before the group decided to scrap the project due to friction with RCA. The second part (presented as bonus tracks) instead contains the very first tracks ever recorded by the band, still under the name Warsaw. These recordings date back as far as July 18, 1977, and the year they were made says a great deal about the musical style that marks them. Finally, there's a track from 1980 (also relatively rare) that seemingly closes out the first part, but which should really be considered a chapter of its own. As we can see, listening to these tracks offers an unusual vantage point on the story of Joy Division, from their earliest beginnings to their end.

For this reason, in our analysis we'll prefer to follow a chronological order, starting from the back of the collection rather than the beginning. The five bonus tracks had never been included on any Joy Division album or anthology ("At A Later Date" was originally released in 1977 on a compilation that's now impossible to find). Yet, heard with the benefit of hindsight, these compositions turn out to be an extraordinary period document: in them we really do see Warsaw striving to become the "new" great hope of punk music.

Fresh, as is well known, from a Sex Pistols gig, the young musicians – Curtis on vocals, Bernard Sumner on guitar, Peter Hook on bass, with Terry Mason, then Tony Tabac, Steve Brotherdale and Stephen Morris taking turns on drums – had already immediately grasped all the tricks of the trade: frantically played distorted guitars, uncontainable and arrogant vocals, ragged screams used as a counterpoint to catchy choruses, energetic, rhythmic "gang vocals" designed to keep the crowd alert and involved. For this reason, these tracks strike us partly as the product of a "calculated" and "lucid" ability to pinpoint the "stereotypes" of punk style. We would therefore compare this output not only to the "rough" fury of the Sex Pistols, but also to the refined and shrewd work of defining the features of this genre carried out by the Clash, already starting with their self-titled album, released that very same year. After all, the mature aesthetic of Joy Division, besides Curtis's emotional despair, would also owe something to a detached, deliberate study of which sounds to use and which stylistic originality to pursue. Besides a "gut", Joy Division also had a "brain". It must be acknowledged, however, that the frontman's vocal delivery is immeasurably more violent and explosive than that of Johnny Rotten and Joe Strummer (just listen to that "Warsaw" screamed at the start of "Gutz"!).

This raw material recorded by Warsaw had extremely limited circulation, and yet it had everything it needed to hit the mark: it contains all the immediacy and all the crowd-pleasing, crowd-dragging power that punk demands, the choruses are duly shrewd and seductive, and even Curtis's delivery, still far from the low, brooding register that would later make him unmistakable, stays consistently in the higher, more strained registers typical of punk. The genre had only just been born, but it seems it had already become a genre in its own right. How can you not love the chorus of "The Kill" ("It's another, 'nother, 'nother, 'nother kill!")? You might think nothing could be more punk than that – and yet you'd be wrong! We mentioned earlier a possible comparison with the Clash. Well, brace yourself, because you'll never again hear the future Joy Division delighting us with a lovely "Na na na na na na na na no good!", a true apotheosis of the style, one that so closely recalls the "Dial nine nine nine nine nine" in the Clash's own "London's Burning".

But there's something else too, and it's quite significant. We mentioned grunge earlier. Listen to the guitars on "Inside The Line", and it will already feel, startlingly so, like hearing Nirvana jamming in a recording studio (even if the "usual" punk gang vocals are still there, keeping time). And the aforementioned "The Kill" (not to be confused with the identically titled track on "Still", with which it has nothing in common) also shows, in both the instrumentation and the vocal delivery, a darkness and gloom unusual for the time, one that again brings it closer to some rare tracks recorded by Nirvana (listen for instance to "Help Me", found on the bootleg "A Season In Hell", whose opening incidentally so closely recalls "Exercise One", now on "Still"). In this track in particular, Curtis's deep, torn unease begins to take over: the noisy arrogance of punk is still there, yes, but so is a painful, personal anguish, which carries us from punk's collective bravado toward the intimate depths of his inner self. It's a desperate scream that truly already anticipates that of Cobain (live or on demo), a figure with whom there are certainly many biographical parallels, and, as this material reveals, artistic ones too.

Having finished this splendid feast of bonus tracks, let's now move on to the first part. It opens directly and in a relatively "light" fashion with "The Drawback", in something of an analogy with the incipit of "Unknown Pleasures". What follows are tracks that in fact already appeared on that album or were released as singles and later collected on "Substance" and "Still", but often in radically different versions. What we're hearing here are Joy Division in full transition. Less than a year after Warsaw's first recording, the band is already no longer punk, and yet you can still hear where it came from. The versions on Warsaw are generally sparer than those released on "Unknown Pleasures" or on the other collections mentioned above. In some cases they sound much more punk ("They Walked In Line" or "Living In The Ice Age"), but at other times, surprisingly, less so (the title track relies more on the bass than the guitars, compared with the version on "Substance"). It's fascinating to hear what remains, in "They Walked In Line" and "Living In The Ice Age", of the energetic "gang vocals" we heard earlier in, say, "The Kill" or "At A Later Date": they've dimmed, becoming almost a shadow of what they once were. Before long, they would die out completely, along with the band's punk period. What still keeps a closer tie to the 1977 demos, however, is Curtis's delivery, which, while now more composed, moving toward the cold restraint that would define it on future records, still lingers on higher notes rather than the low, brooding ones that would later come to dominate ("They Walked In Line", "Novelty", "Transmission").

Among the gems contained in this part, special mention should go to the particular edition of "Transmission", marked by the use of "naive" electronic sounds perfectly in keeping with punk's DIY ethos: their presence actually already signals its being left behind, and yet the appearance to maintain is still one of bare essentials and improvisation (an equally successful similar effect can be heard in the version of "Insight" on "Les Bains Douches", one of the best live recordings we have of Joy Division).

"No Love Lost" has an instrumental first section rich with sophisticated sound effects, with reworked guitar sounds that almost recall those of Bowie's "Speed Of Life"; the sonic language used is so different from the rest of the material recorded during the 1978 session that it suggests a later reworking of the original recording.

By contrast, the masterful use of electronics is far less surprising on the final track, "As You Said", from 1980, if you consider the enormous growth that, within just a couple of years, had led Joy Division to record classics of the most refined electronic new wave, such as "Love Will Tear Us Apart" and "Decades". And yet this track too stands out in particular for the modernity inherent in that pounding yet muffled house beat, which makes it feel almost like an ante-litteram "Idioteque" by Radiohead.

And with that, our chronological reading of the collection comes to a close.

Other bootleg releases of the same material by the band would follow, now virtually impossible to find, such as An Ideal For Killing (2002) and Reaction (2011).

Warsaw nonetheless remains an essential document for understanding the very earliest phase of Joy Division's artistic output, but its value isn't purely historical – it's artistic too: the potential inherent in the tracks recorded by Warsaw is well worth noting, and the original versions presented here of songs that later became famous in other arrangements sometimes possess an aesthetic appeal all their own, and of no secondary importance.

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