Consumer Guide Album

Joy Division: Substance [Qwest, 1988]
Where New Order's Substance showcases the trajectory of secret singles specialists, Joy Division's recollects the byways of a natural album band. Starting out as unhysterical punks, they follow their pessimism where it leads, into slower tempos and machinelike rhythms, getting excited only at the end of side one, where enveloped by the dark of night they find their beat and shout out "Dance, dance, dance, dance to the radio." They follow that beat where it leads, back down into a pessimism that's now frankly romantic and personal if you've got the sense to hear it that way. And then love tears them apart. B+