Order	Song	Notes
1	Dead Souls
2	Glass
3	A Means To An End
4	Twenty Four Hours
5	Passover
6	Insight
7	Colony
8	These Days
9	Love Will Tear Us Apart
10	Isolation
11	The Eternal
12	Digital

Ah, the horror, the horror... where's Colonel Kurtz? Somehow the
demented Brando figure is there, spiritually leading the new dance.
Like him, today's purveyors have witnessed the failure of wanton
destruction, as epitomized by punk, and in turn have retreated
inwardly.
But whereas he translated his thoughts into some nightmare
paradise of his own creation, recent bands' introspections manifest
themselves in tight, uneasy rhythms, simultaneously despondent and
obsessively exhilarating. Coming too late to lose themselves in
furiously simple thrashes, they've composed out of that same
frustration something more complex, but equally immediate.
Joy division are masters of this gothic gloom, and they're getting
even better at it. Since they played London last November with the
Buzzcocks, they've added new songs, more vigorous than their
predecessors. Less colourful now, they're getting closer to the
despair that's been the core of their work thus far, and they're
honing in on it by twisting purplish plots round slower rhythms,
bringing the bass even further to the fore and allowing Ian Curtis's
knotted-brow singing greater expression.
In other hands their songs would collapse disastrously, but
Curtis's controlled balladeering makes lines like "I remember/When
we were young" (from "Insight") one of the saddest statements in
pop, which is after all, the province of the young, and that sung to
the sweetest, most melancholic tune, too.
Perversely, they didn't play the great last single,
"Transmission", but the next, "Love Will Tear Us Apart", was
tantalizingly aired; featuring synthesizer more heavily to
lightening effect, it breaks away from the claustrophobia into
clearer surrounds. Optimism on the way? Whatever, I'm prepared to
wait.
CHRIS BOHN