ALBUMStill
ORIGINAL RELEASE October 1981
KEY TRACKS “Sister Ray” (live); “Glass”; “Dead Souls”
THE STORY Originally released as a double album, Still is an odds-and-sods collection of studio outtakes, partially completed tracks, and live recordings of a show that took place just a few days before Curtis’s death. It’s worth just hearing Curtis joke, as Joy Division’s grinding take on the Velvet’s “Sister Ray” comes to a close, “You should hear our version of ‘Louie Louie.’ ” There are other great tracks here: “Something Must Break” is a wrenching anti-anthem, and “Walked in Line” bristles with paranoia.
BONUS MATERIAL The Rhino reissue compiles all of Still’s original tracks, and then adds an extra disc that features eight songs recorded on February 20, 1980, at Town Hall, High Wycombe, as well as six sound-check numbers, including “Isolation,” “Ice Age,” and “Disorder.”
ALBUMMusic from the Motion Picture Control
RELEASE DATE October 2007
KEY TRACKS “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (Joy Division); “Boredom” (Buzzcocks); “Atmosphere” (Joy Division); “What Goes On” (Velvet Undergound)
THE STORY As a soundtrack, Control fulfills its purpose by bringing together Joy Division’s biggest “hit” with a cover of a Joy Division tune (“Shadowplay”) by a contemporary band (Killers), and also includes a few stray bits of dialogue from the film to introduce tracks by New Order (particularly the argument about management that precedes “Hypnosis”). But it also does a nice job of setting the mood for the film by including tracks that influenced Joy Division — the VU’s “What Goes On,” Iggy Pop’s “Sister Midnight,” and a couple by David Bowie. The version of Joy Division’s “Atmosphere,” a song about the tensions in Curtis’s marriage, is devastating. Not exactly a pick-me-up, but Control at least balances the darkness of the Curtis tale with a little light.
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