Taking the stage to the iconic Kraftwerk song “Trans Europe Express”, Joy Division and New Order founding bassist Peter Hook remarked “you’re a long way from Macclesfield”, perhaps a nod to his Northern England beginnings and how far his musical life has managed to take him. Backed by The Light, who consists of Hook’s son Jack Bates on bass, Andy Pool on keyboards, Paul Kehoe on drums, and longtime collaborator David Potts on guitar, Hook and company started off the night covering a number of Joy Division classics. Opening the set with “Exercise One”, they transitioned to the 1978 single “Digital”, and later on to some of the better-known tracks like “Heart and Soul” and “Strange Days”. It seemed the sold out crowd’s highlight of the Joy Division portion of the night was “Warsaw”, perhaps the loudest and most energetic song of the set. With no opening band, the Joy Division set seemed to serve as the warm up act and chronological starting point into to the night of New Order to come.
The November 18, 2014 show at Neumo's serves as the third installment of what seems to be a chronological covers series for Hook and his band. In years past they’ve toured together playing Joy Division albums Unknown Pleasure and Closer, as well as New Order’s first two albums Movement and Power, Corruption, and Lies. This time around they took on New Order’s third and fourth albums, 1985’s Low Life and 1986’s Brotherhood.
After a brief break, the band returned to the stage and took on some of New Order’s singles from that mid ‘80’s era, before braking into the tracks from Brotherhood. Most of the show Hook took on vocal duties with a bass strapped over his shoulder. My guess is that he only actually played his bass around half the time. He left his son Jack to play all the pedestrian bass lines and fittingly took on most of the big, memorable bass riffs himself. Although Hook did a splendid job on vocals, his guitarist David Potts seemed to sound a lot more like New Order vocalist Bernard Sumner, who is fittingly also New Order’s guitar player. It’s understandable that Hook would do most of the front man work however, since he is probably the biggest reason most people went to the show in the first place.
The band took another short recess before returning to perform the tracks from Low-Life. Throughout the show Hook would occasionally grab a drumstick and pound out some beats from the drum sampler mounted next to the drum kit. He even brought out the melodica for “Love Vigilantes”. One of the biggest dance parties of the night took place during “Perfect Kiss”. Thankfully they played a nice long version of it to keep the party going.
After leaving the stage for the 4th time, they returned for a few final New Order favorites; “Leave Me Alone”, “Confusion”, “True Faith”, and lastly “Temptation”, which Hook dedicated to Kurt Cobain. All told, the band was on stage for well over 2 ½ hours, and a majority of the fans of the iconic band stuck around until the very end, soaking up every last bit of it.
Setlist:
(Joy Division)
- Exercise One
- Digital
- Heart & Soul
- The Only Mistake
- Warsaw
- Failures
- Atrocity Exhibition
(New Order)
- Murder
- Lonesome Tonight
- Thieves Like Us
- Paradise
- Weirdo
- As it is When it Was
- Broken Promise
- Way of Life
- Bizarre Love Triangle
- All Day Long
- Angel Dust
- Every Little Counts
- Love Vigilantes
- The Perfect Kiss
- This Time of Night
- Sunrise
- Elegia
- Sooner Than You Think
- Subculture
- Face Up
(Encore)
- Leave Me Alone
- Confusion
- True Faith
- Temptation