Peter Hook And The Light – The Studio, 27 February 2015

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Before the Happy Mondays and the Stone Roses, long before Oasis, Peter Hook was a mainstay of the Manchester music scene, playing bass first in Joy Division and then, following the death of Ian Curtis, New Order. But New Order are infrequent performers of late, and its members, increasingly, are solo artists. Bernard Sumner, the guitarist who assumed vocal duties following Curtis’ death, has recorded with The Smiths’ Johnny Marr, and Peter Hook, no longer, technically, a bandmember, is touring with The Light; that drummer Stephen Morris and keyboard player Gillian Gilbert called their outfit The Other Two says a lot about Sumner’s and Hook’s status within New Order.

And so Hook brought his show to Auckland last night. And an odd show it was. Advertised for 7:30, it started after nine, with Hook and his four-piece backing band playing their own support set, a half-dozen or so Joy Division numbers. As befits the post-punk sound of Hook’s original band, this set was short, loud and angry, and then it was over. The five left the stage, and returned twenty minutes later to play their New Order set. As advertised, they played, in their entirety, New Order’s fourth, and then third, albums, Brotherhood and Low-Life.

Whole-album performances are something of a new development for ageing musicians. Ian Anderson has lately taken to performing Thick As A Brick; Pixies are touring No Code. But it’s a development that’s not without its pitfalls. During last night’s main-set second segment — the band left the stage for a few minutes between Low-Life and Brotherhood — Elegia was something of a dud. A filler on vinyl, it was included in the show, presumably, for the sake of completeness, but was, frankly, a little dull on stage, Hook sitting on a stool, alone in mid-stage and noodling on a six-string bass and, if we’re being honest, not entirely engaging his audience.

For the rest of the show, however, the audience were, most assuredly, Hook’s. He’s not a charismatic performer — he’s a big man, his greying hair hinting toward a mohican, he stood in front of his microphone stand and, well, often didn’t play his bass, his son Jack Bates, the band’s second bassist, providing the bottom end to the sound. Hook played his bass like a lead quitar, providing melodic fills where he felt necessary, the rest of the time waving his right arm around, equal parts Nazi salute, apt given Hook’s documented fascination with fascism, and TV weatherman pointing out rain on a map. He played his bass with ferocity and power, especially during the Joy Division set, the band’s sound full and awesome.

There was, as has been noted, a degree of filler, an inevitability of the whole-album format. But the two albums Hook chose for last night’s show, perhaps the high-water marks of New Order’s career, contained plenty of classics too. Bizarre Love Triangle was the first serious crowd-pleaser of the New Order set, Transmission having done the same job during the Joy Division opener. Perhaps the fact that guitarist David Potts contributed vocals helped; Hook is a bass-player of justifiable and deserved renown, but there’s a reason why Bernard Sumner, not he, took over as singer to fill the vacuum left by the death of Ian Curtis. Hook’s vocals were frequently so far back in the mix as to be almost inaudible; when he could be heard, there was a nasality that betrayed his Broughton roots. With neither bassline to play or vocals to sing, Hook stomped around the stage as Potts, sounding a tad closer to Sumner, albeit without the trademark Salford whine, sang Sooner Thank You Think.

The two full albums completed, Hook and the band left the stage, returning for a four-song encore that gave them the chance to play crowd favourites from other albums. Peter Hook managed, for the first time, to say more than three words at once to the audience, and his band, as tight as they had been throughout the evening, sounded more like a traditional prog-rock band than the synth-punk outfit they’d been for the rest of the show. Hook was significantly more animated, and the audience pogoed their way wildly through State Of The Nation; Hook himself finally, during True Faith, looked like he was actually enjoying himself. Temptation closed the set, the closest Peter Hook And The Light came to sounding joyful.

The whole-album schtick, then, works up to a point. It saves a band from compiling a setlist, but minimises the opportunities for surprises, constraining performers’ choices. These concerts aren’t likely to win any converts; they’re very much constructed with an established fanbase in mind. The biggest surprise of last night, then, was the absence of both Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart and New Order’s Blue Monday. But the audience, mostly male and almost entirely middle-aged — I lost count of the Joy Division T-shirts — didn’t seem to mind. Peter Hook has a loyal fanbase, and last night they enjoyed their hero. It was an odd show, but it was an effective one.

– Steve McCabe

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Peter Hook Set list:

[Joy Division set]
No Love Lost
Disorder
Digital
She’s Lost Control
Heart & Should
A Means To An End
Transmission
Shadowplay

[Brotherhood set]
Let’s Go
Lonesome Tonight
Thieves Like Us
Paradise
Weirdo
As It Is When It Was
Broken Promises
Way Of Life
Bizarre Love Triangle
All Day Long
Angel Dust
Every Little Counts

[Low-Life set]
Love Vigilantes
The Perfect Kiss
This Time Of Night
Sunrise
Elegia
Sooner Than You Think
Subculture
Face Up

[Encore]
State Of The Nation
Confusion
True Faith
Temptation

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