1999 02 20 Best Manchester Albums and Mancunian Candidates, Uncut

THE 20 BEST MANCHESTER ALBUMS

1

JOY DIVISION
CLOSER

Factory (1980)

IAN Curtis was beset by health, psychological and personal problems when Joy Division entered Britannia Row studios to record Closer in March, 1980. Their second tour de force was far removed from its predecessor: side two particularly revealed a new, breathtaking, almost supernatural, symphonic music. Painfully honest and unflinchingly emotional, Closer was Joy Division's triumph and Ian Curtis’ personal testament. By the time of its release, he’d committed suicide. 

(Un?)intentional parting message to bandmates:  "You take my place in the showdown. I'll observe with a pitiful eye” (“Heart And Soul”) 

Highest UK chart position: 6

3

JOY DIVISION
UNKNOWN PLEASURES

Factory (1979)

FORMERLY the punkier Warsaw, Joy Division entered Strawberry Studios with producer Martin Hannett to record their debut album for £10,000, Factory boss Tony Wilson’s life savings. The result transformed the sound and style of rock. Bass and drums were liberated from their roles as rock’s traditional understudies, duelling with Bernard Albrecht’s minimalist, sodium-lit guitar and Ian Curtis’ stark, insightful vocals. For students of the Earth-moving power of rock, this is the Holy Bible.

Eerily prophetic existentialist moment: “ A loaded gun won’t set you free ... so you say" (“New Dawn Fades”)

Highest UK chart position: 71

4

NEW ORDER
TECHNIQUE

Factory (1989)

FOLLOWING the mild retreat of 1986’s more acoustic Brotherhood, a battle-weary New Order went in search of a new music and found it in Ibiza. Technique brilliantly absorbed the island’s embryonic Balearic rhythms into the band’s trademark dance-rock, defining an era as much as The Stone Roses (released three months later, in May).

“Fine Time” was almost a pure acid anthem, but much of the album contained an underlying sadness that prophesied the ultimately empty pot at the end of Ecstasy’s rainbow. 

Man-made mountain of unassailable magnificence: Vanishing Point, the troubled offspring of Decades, 10 years earlier 

Highest UK chart position: 1

5

THE SMITHS
THE QUEEN IS DEAD

Rough Trade (1986)

RECORDING of The Smiths’ third album was beset by internal conflicts and Johnny Marr‘s near collapse. Nevertheless, The Queen Is Dead was the band’s most complete statement yet and remains their most lauded. It balanced humour with brutality, repression with awakening, and offered glimpses of a mythical, rose-tinted “Dear Old Blighty" while remaining firmly rooted in contemporary England. One of the seminal releases of the Eighties. 

Quintessentially ironic burst of jokingly(?) suicidal, ambiguous, asexual self-mockery: “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” 

Highest UK chart position: 2

8

THE SMITHS
THE SMITHS

Rough Trade (1984)

THE album that announced Morrissey and Marr as a songwriting duo to rival Jagger and Richards and Lennon and McCartney. With Marr’s chimings at their most ebullient, Morrissey’s unique worldview unleashed 10 masterful songs dealing in reclusiveness, infanticide, Moors murders, problematic sexual urges and illness with a baneful romanticism steeped in kitchen sink dramas and a difficult childhood. Overnight, the role of misfit and malcontent was suddenly unutterably fashionable and desirable.

Magical misery tour: “Reel Around The Fountain” - a dark tale of violent forbidden love 

Highest UK chart position: 2

9

NEW ORDER
POWER, CORRUPTION & LIES

Factory (1983)

FOLLOWING the doom-laden, post-Curtis Movement, the embryonic New Order looked towards a new vocabulary and the key word was “up.” The template for much of Power . . . lay in 1981’s one-off single, “Everything’s Gone Green”, where the foursome explored sequencer technology and self-production for the first time. This was the result: a proud, unashamedly, joy-filled offering brimming with Order classics (“Age Of Consent”, “Leave Me Alone” . . . ) which shaped dance music well into the next decade. Cornerstone existentialist dance track: “5-8-6”, the blueprint for “Blue Monday” 

Highest UK chart position: 4

11

ELECTRONIC
ELECTRONIC

Parlophone (1991)

WHEN Bernard Sumner teamed up with Johnny Marr, the world had a supergroup devoid of any negative, Seventies connotations and they didn’t disappoint. From the Manchester Constabulary baiting “Idiot Country” to the epic fizz of “Feel Every Beat”, Electronic provided the perfect distillation of electronic music, synth funk, post-punk ideology and modern urbane poetry. 

Superlatively Mancunian existentialist moment: Sumner’s “ I don’t know if we could get lost in a city this size if we wanted to" (“Some Distant Memory”) 

Highest UK chart position: 2

14

NEW ORDER
LOW-LIFE

Factory (1985)

FOLLOWING the enormous success of “Blue Monday”, New Order were catapulted into the big league after years of lower-key independence. But it was business as usual in Manchester as Low-Life perfectly balanced the commercial and the left-of-field. “The Perfect Kiss" took frog sounds onto the dancefloor,

“This Time Of Night” triggered the fury of Jeffrey Bernard, (who threatened lawsuits over the use of his “I . . . live what’s called a ‘low-life’” quote), while longer-term, Joy Division-era fans applauded the pulverising “Sunrise”.

Weirdest song in the 1985 album chart: the funereal “Elegia”

Highest UK chart position: 7

15

THE DURUTTI COLUMN
LC

Factory (1982)

TAKING a trading name from a Situationist manifesto, Vini Reilly progressed from his Hannett-produced, instrumental first album to add his own curiously affecting reluctant mumble and a sympathetic drummer in psychedelic/punk veteran Bruce Mitchell. With everyone looking towards New Order, the unlikely duo provided an eerie, cocoonlike, uniquely moving glimpse into the numb horror following the death of Ian Curtis. LC derives from a Roman term meaning “The struggle must go on.”

Definitive memorial: “ There was a boy, I almost knew him ... ” (“The Missing Boy”)

No UK chart placing

17

A CERTAIN RATIO
TO EACH...

Factory (1980)

THEIR name came from a Brian Eno lyric, and their inspiration from Wire and George Clinton. ACR were thin, Thirties-clad white boys with a black funky drummer who created com-pellingly austere funk anthems for the oppressed. To Each . . .’s controversial sleeve (Miles Davis’ trumpet depicted against a backdrop of naked concentration camp victims) was misunderstood, but the music was intoxicating and influential.

David Byrne crafted Talking Heads’ white funk after seeing ACR, and nine years later Winter Hill’s mesmerising rhythm would form the chassis for the Roses’ Resurrection.

Percussion force: “The Fox”

No UK chart placing

19

MONACO
MUSIC FOR PLEASURE

Polydor (1997)

PETER Hook’s first side project, Revenge, had been a fairly dubious attempt to reacquaint the great man with the machine oil of live touring, but here Hooky returned to the unmistakable bass twangs and soaring, melancholy songwriting that marked his contribution to New Order. With fellow, Sumner-y vocalist David Potts, Monaco produced a flawed but uplifting Mancunian pop album, the most enduring of a clutch of efforts in that department, including 808 State’s 808:90, M-People’s Northern Soul, Intastella’s People and World Of Twist’s Quality Street. 

Song that definitely isn’t about Mrs Merton: “What Do You Want From Me?”

Highest UK chart position: 11

IAN CURTIS

Job : legend
AS frontman of Joy Division, Ian Curtis battled from undistinguished punk origins to become easily the most charismatic frontman of the era. Curtis’ stark baritone and trapped-butterfly dancing had obvious appeal, but his true genius lay in his words. Battling epilepsy, psychological and an array of other personal problems, Curtis delved into the darker corners of the human condition to discover a new high watermark for rock lyricism. The surreal, wonderfully insightful lyrics for Closer arguably match anything in literature.
With difficulties mounting, Curtis committed suicide in May, 1980, aged 23.
Current whereabouts: Macclesfield Cemetery

MORRISSEY

Job : persecuted sometime yodeller 

A TRUE one-off, Dublin-born Morrissey endured a difficult baptism in Manchester at the hands of Rusholme ruffians, penning sulky missives about the New York Dolls to the music press. Initially a reviled figure, as leader of The Smiths Morrissey’s wonderful Mancunian brogue, studied Englishness and disaffected lyrics earned the adulation of a generation.

Following the band’s breakup, Mozzer’s subsequent patchy solo career has led to American success, boxers, skinheads, lawsuits, and a not entirely unreasonable persecution complex.

Current whereabouts: Altrincham, after paying ex-Smiths drummer Mike Joyce a million pounds

BERNARD SUMNER

Job : Joy Division/New Order/Electronic: guitar/vocals/electronics 

BERNARD Sumner grew up with his stepfather’s surname, Dicken, in a sickly, working-class Salford family. After seeing The Sex Pistols in Manchester, he wired up a cheap guitar to the needle of his gran’s amplifier. So began the minimal, clipped, self-taught style that was so intrinsic to Joy Division. Later, reluctantly adopting vocals with New Order, Bernard stumbled on one of the greatest, unlikely voices in British pop.

With a significant understanding of both high art and the low-brow, Bernard’s plaintive warble is often accompanied by absurdly goofy dancing.

Current whereabouts: the studio, mixing the next Electronic album

JOHNNY MARR

Job : this chiming man 

WITHOUT Marr, would there have been a Morrissey; without Morrissey, would there have been a Marr? With the Smiths, Moz & Marr were as inseparable and arguably as good as Lennon & McCartney. Since their partnership ended, Marr has proved the more durable, turning his plectrum to work with Bryan Ferry, The The, The Pretenders and - most famously - Electronic. However, as with the two ex-Beatles, there’s always the suspicion that they worked best when they worked together.

Current whereabouts: Manchester, mixing Electronic and preparing - gasp - his first guitar band since The Smiths

PETER HOOK

Job : New Order/Monaco bass behemoth

LIKE Sumner, Salford lad Hooky was a non-musician whose fumblings with a cheap bass and Bert Weedon guitar book resulted in one of the most distinctive and influential noises in pop music. Hook’s mournful, occasional brutal but unassailably human, soulful playing defined Joy Division and still underpins New Order and Monaco. As beguiling as his music, Hook has constructed a public image as a hard, mean and miserable bastard, which usually desists enquiry as to his inner, sensitive, even cuddly soft centre. 

Current whereabouts: the studio, preparing the second Monaco album

MARTIN HANNETT

Job : sonic magician

ONE of few record producers to transform the sound of music, former bass player Hannett enthralled The Buzzcocks, Magazine and many more with his revolutionary worship of the drum sound and bizarre, intimidatory tactics with musicians.However, Hannett is best remembered for his pioneering work for Factory and especially Joy Division. Although he fell out with Tony Wilson in the early Eighties and endured long-term drug/drink problems, Martin was reunited with Factory in 1988 for Happy Mondays’ Bummed, only to die tragically early in 1991.

Current whereabouts: the ether, attempting to tune in telepathically to Stephen Morris’ snare drum

ANTHONY H WILSON

Job : mogul

THE former merely Tony Wilson originated as a Granada Television presenter (a position he still enjoys) and founded Didsbury-based Factory Records. Eschewing traditional business practices in favour of Situationist, often anarchistic principles, Factory catapulted Joy Division, New Order and Happy Mondays to global success through revolutionary sleeves, stunning content, an artistic label identity and little traditional industry promotion. Factory went bankrupt in 1992, but Anthony H has revived the label for his latest proteges, Space Monkeys, and enjoys enduring revulsion for his arty taste in suits.

Current whereabouts: Manchester, telephoning LA

SIMON TOPPING (A CERTAIN RATIO)

Job : mad funkster

CRUCIAL to the development of white funk, demob clothing and khaki shorts in the UK. When ACR’s Topping mysteriously retired from singing to study percussion in New York, ACR/Durutti Column manager Tony Wilson commented “I’ve got this great vocalist [Topping] who refuses to sing, and the world’s greatest guitarist [Vini Reilly], who shouldn’t be allowed to sing!”

In 1987, Topping resurfaced minus his lugubrious baritone but with M-Person Mike Pickering as T-Coy, inventing Mancunian Acid House and providing a new outlet for rabid ACR fans’ whistles.

Current whereabouts: AWOL in Manchester