This record did not have that good a reputation when fresh. If you listened to it the right way (so to speak) it was watery JoyDivision with a guy who couldn't sing. While the next LP Power Corruption and Lies and even singles released after Movement were more confident statements of where the band was headed, Movement gets left as a completist's album the way Still was for Joy Division. That's a pity as Movement shows a band finding their own way at their own pace and finding that the pace of the way is as fast as it was between Unknown Pleasures and Closer. They are the same musicians, after all. It's not like Smokie decided to ditch the AOR hits and get all angsty. Some of this does sound a little like Closer II but careful listening will reveal the forward march in every track.
The first thing new listeners heard from this metamorphosed version of their favourite band was not the jackhammers and medieval drumming of Atrocity Exhibition but a lone guitar, a little wobbly from a chorus pedal playing a brisk downward figure but not a crushing minor third. The drums and bass pick it up and the second guitar adds seom swirling overdriven arpeggios. The vocal is by Peter Hook but at this stage it might have been either of the other two as it's pushed back to sit among the other instruments, only just a little over them for clarity. Fans had already heard the upbeat major key sound of Ceremony as it's own single and about half of it live on Still. But where that sounded expansive of the previous sound this sound bright with a fanfare like riff high on the fretboard and infectious danceable rhythm. The words are addressed to a second person and describe an act of finality but also an attitude of resumption. It's like a statement to anyone who needed to hear it that the new name and sound were from the same people and, no, they werent going to try and get away with pretending it didn't happen.
But then things do go down. Truth begins with a gentle odd beat on a drum machine that is joined by a melodica, the reedy schoolkid blown keyboard that would feature in the band's music for years to come. Here it is playing a lamenting figure on a minor third and down modally to a tone below. It's Bernard's voice as it will be for almost all the songs on the record. It's a strange day and he feels isolated from everyone he sees as he walks along outside. An instrumental section brings the familiar sound of overdriven guitars that sound like machines. A song of mourning? Hard not to think it.
An echoey synth and bass with a thumping kick drum and machine percussion, Senses takes on a kind of funk that was tried in Komakino by the old band. Two brief verses with abstract images and the refirain, no reason ever was given. The funk workout continues but it's not a boogie party with the synth drone of death rising from the depths and the brittle guitar duel not sounding like Chic. Eventually, the downward motion prevails and repeats until it halts in a swirling cloud of synthesis.
Very similar territory is navigated for Chosen Time with the funk more regimented into a machine like briskness. Sumner's frail vocal narrates a figure helpless to understand what has happened to his friend. I think this is unambiguously about Curtis. The jammy workthrough of the riff ends in the same kind of arcade game synthesised splatter as Insight from Unknown Pleasures.
Over on side two, I.C.B. begins with a much grimmer lone guitar riff that is more quickly backed with a stamping kick drum and then insistent bass riff. Bernard's thin voice is fragile, barely above a whisper, as he sings strings of abstraction that add up to a sense of helplessness again. Two verses, a riff workout and an end with more of the Insight game beeps and squeals. Then, after the band has stopped a soft bass note has been left on as a kind of gentle counter. The title might well stand for Ice Cream Brontosaurus but probably does stand for Ian Curits' Burial. The melancholy created by the vocal, soft as thoughts while riding in a car to a cemetery, and the constrasting force of the music build a cloudy day of conflicting emotions. It's a song of resignation and always gets straight to me.
The Him is the most elaborate arrangement on the album, shifting from the quiet bass riff of the opening, through the introductory keyboard and muted trumpet, the controlled harmonised vocals and then the raging banshee wail of the instrumental sections. It's not elaborate because of any complex counterpoint (it's one riff all the way through and a three-note one) but the emotive passages which range from the ominous to the intense to the great howling instrumental sections after each verse, the second delayed as a cinematic synth drone ramps up the tension before an even more violent playing of the distant screaming synth section storms in. Bernard is left with the final words of the song, which is seeped in images of guilt and religion: "I'm so tired. I'm so tired...." Seldom has emotional exhaustion felt so satisfying. This song was the only thing that worked after the worst break up of my life happened. I was almost levitating listening to it.
Doubts Even Here. People without depth will say this song sounds like something from Closer and leave it at that. A few bars of military tom toms march until the meltingly beautiful figure of contrary motion begins on the keyboards. This will be almost the entirety of the song's harmonic structure, a procession of insistent epic of the strings and a building interplay between the bass and guitars both tightens and expands. Three verses of imagery that might well be Hook's statement of grief but also contain anger which could apply to a world beyond that. And then something happens at the end. Hook sings a three note melody rising to a minor third as the harmonic structure changes from modal to diatonic. Instead of the lower voice returning to C it falls to A which changes the emotional tone immediately from the worrying intensity of the verses to something more grinding and tragic. Also, as this is happening we hear new member Gillian Gilbert speaking. Sometimes in collision with Hook's singing and sometimes between lines. It can be very difficult to work it out. I don't really want to do this as the mystery of it adds so much to the emotional weight of the song. Then again, when I found this out it adds to it. Gillian is reciting the seventy-seventh Psalm which is an odd piece of work that goes like this:
I was dazed and I could not speak.
My thoughts went back to times long past.
I remembered forgotten years.
All night long, I was in deep distress.
As I lay thinking, my spirit was sunk in deep despair.
Will the Lord reject us for evermore and never again show favour?
Has his unfailing love now failed us utterly?
Must his promise time and again be unfullfilled?
Has God forgotten to be gracious?
Has he in anger withheld his mercies?
But then, O Lord, I call to mind thy deeds.
I recall thy wonderful acts in times gone by.
Weirdly, if you read this while listening to the song her voice seems to sound completely clear.
Denial closes the album with more heavy tom toms, churning guitars and a faceless vocal from Bernard with words about a failure to communicate or perhaps even to understand and act in prevention. "It's just something I know. The answer's not there. It comes and it goes and it frightens me." And then, finally: "time worked so well upon us, inside of me, inside my soul." The intensity ends only when the song does and it does so suddenly without lingering. Album over.
Of course the death of their friend by suicide was going to affect them deeply and find its way into their music. The effect of this is strange considering where this band had come from. While Ian Curtis with his stormcloud of a voice was absent from the sound and replaced by voices that often sounded cowed by self consciousness and thick emotion his death dominated their first long statement. Recall that, apart from anything else, they were writing about someone who was distinct from the one the fans thought they knew, distinct even from the one they believed they themselves knew. Recall, too, that these were people in their early twenties who were channelling into their skill an event of crushing impact with a perplexing origin and a series of increasingly complex shockwaves into the culture.
But this is not a concept album, not, at any rate, the way that The Wall was a concept album. It's still poignant to think that in the midst of the bizarre cult-like mourning of Ian Curtis from the groundswell the band's own compulsion to make statements like this found a setting in a changing sound. As rapidly as they were developing it's notable how little this record resembles Joy Division. What it does sound like is a transformation the ex Joy Division go into the studio and come out as New Order. That's far deeper a change than the band that created Ceremony which even bore the Joy Division byline on the label. None of their records, their albums or their epic 12 inch singles sounded anything like this again. So, there they were at the station, talked about the only thing they could talk about, and when the train came they got on and never came back.
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