2006 03 Q Classic Morrissey and The Story of Manchester - Part 15 - Great Manchester Albums

50 GREAT MANCHESTER ALBUMS

From the Buzzcocks to Doves, Britain's second city has unleashed a succession of albums that changed the face of music. Here's your guide to the best of them....

THE DURUTTI COLUMN

The Return Of The Durutti Column

FACTORY 1979

Cult miserabillst plays super-sad instrumental guitar.

For a movement that was meant to be about free minds and expression, punk dogmas were quick to harden. The Durutti Column, aka guitarist Vini Reilly, kicked against them profoundly with nine meditative instrumental pieces, augmented by minimal programmed rhythms and the judicious use of an Echoplex unit, courtesy of producer Martin Hannett. The seemingly improvised results were delicate and melancholic. But there’s still comfort and even joy here. IH

JOY DIVISION

Unknown Pleasures

FACTORY, 1979

Stark and atmospheric - this is their solemn, definitive statement.

Today, the idea of Joy Division is inseparable from the suicide of Ian Curtis. Ironic, then, that the music they made together has remained so inspirational to successive generations. Framed by Martin Hannett’s production - it sounds like it was recorded in a deep freeze - Curtis sings as if from the verge of an abyss while startling, inexorable music rages and shimmers (see Shadowplay for one of the most intense examples). Like the pulsar PSR 1919+21, represented on Peter Saville's iconic sleeve, it’s still resonating. IH

A CERTAIN RATIO

To Each...

FACTORY 1981

Simon Topping and co's brass-assisted but mournful debut.

Factory Records producer Martin Hannett’s hallmarks are omnipresent on A Certain Ratio’s first long-player: brittle, twangy bass, claustrophobic drums, ominous-cum-numinous vocals... Indeed, released in the wake of Ian Curtis’s suicide, To Each... often sounds like one long, sepulchral tribute to Joy Division. A Certain Ratio subsequently took their trademark shorts for a funkier dancefloor spin, but this obliquely entrancing debut seals turn-of-the-’80s Mancunian futurist melancholy in musical amber. DS

NEW ORDER

Power, Corruption And Lies

FACTORY, 1983

New Order get over being three-quarters of Joy Division.

“You’ve caught me at a bad time,” sings Bernard Sumner on Your Silent Face, “so why don’t you piss off?” Don't do so. New Order were in transition when they made this album, but the music was sublime. Traces of Joy Division’s dark grandeur remain, but the embracing of DMX drums, sequencers and dance culture defines it, with songs such as 5.8.6 hinting at the ecstatic sounds to come. IH

THE SMITHS

The Queen Is Dead

ROUGH TRADE, 1986

An album lyrically worthy of an Oscar - Wilde, that is.

Following the knees-up of Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty, which served both as a preamble and a reminder of Morrissey’s sometime affinity with old-time music hall, the band decided to crash into the title song. Could that be a smile on the Moz lips as he posed outside the Salford Lads’ Club? Certainly there was no lack of humour in Frankly Mr Shankly, while Cemetry Gates exuded a chirpiness that belied its (oddly misspelt) graveyard setting. FD

MORRISSEY

Vauxhall And I

PARLOPHONE, 1994

The second Moz so!o album to reach the top of the charts.

His 1993 live shot Beethoven Was Deaf had failed to impress and Morrissey was hardly flavour of the moment with critics, who were giving him a mauling. But this re-established Morrissey as he returned to almost Smiths-like majesty with the inventive Now My Heart Is Full, packed with Brighton Rock references, Springheeled Jack, with its Lambeth Boys samples, and The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get, which delivered a succinct “who gives a damn?" message to the media. FD

DOVES

The Last Broadcast

HEAVENLY, 2002

A joyous release from the one-time “unlucklest band in Britain”.

Virtually veterans - they’d come together as Sub Sub and had hits even before Oasis had been signed - Doves were dubbed masters of melancholy. But The Last Broadcast is an uplifting experience, a chart-topping affair filled with summer sounds, albeit in sonic guise, almost psych-Floydian at times. It’s all wonderfully diverting, which is what might be expected from a band who cover King Crimson, record it under a flyover and dub the result M62 Song. FD

SUB SUB

Full Fathom Five

ROB'S RECORDS, 1995

Sole offering from the dance trio who became Doves.

Before they were anthemic indie-rockers, Jimi Goodwin and twins Jez and Andy Williams were grinning, E’d-up Mane sybarites riding the coat-tails of acid house. Single Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) went Top 5 in 1993 and this album was its belated follow-up. Described by Jez Williams as “a disaster”, the album certainly never trumps Ain’t No Love’s mesmeric grooves, but it endures as a modish period piece. DS

Andy Williams

How Doves rose from the ashes of Sub Sub. Literally...

Sub Sub’s manifesto?

We just wanted to make tracks that would get played at the Hacienda, something that would get us on the guestlist so we didn't have to queue. There was no greater ambition than that. We didn't know how to play keyboards or programme a sampler, but we thought we'd give it a go.

Ain’t No Love (Ain’t No Use) was a Top 5 hit, wasn’t it?

We wrote it in our bedroom. I won this record at a fair; you usually win a goldfish but I got this shit Hair soundtrack, not the official one. Me and Jez were playing records one day and I picked this out, and we came across this bit we liked. So we sampled it, looped it up, Jimi [Goodwin] came over and worked on it, got Mel [Williams] in to sing on it - and that was it.

Your studio burnt down shortly after you recorded the album...

We were collaborating with Tricky. He was the last person in the studio and [laughs] I think he put a voodoo spell on the place!

But we’d had such bad luck. The studio was in Ancoats, there were always cars being torched outside, so when this happened it was like, “Fucking hell - what next?” We gathered ourselves and moved on. Sub Sub was a learning curve. With Doves we came of age. LW