A Favourite

Do listen to Joy Division’s ‘Decades’ and who knows? You might just shed a tear or two.
I would personally recommend the live version which can be found on the album ‘Still’. Although Curtis’ vocals are a bit unclear and at times, even inaudible, the chorus part of ‘Where have they been?’ is a masterpiece of melancholic perfection.
There is so much depth and desperation in his voice, which cannot be sensed to such an extent on the studio version.

The music likewise, although straightforward is hitting all the right, beautiful notes with the background chords tuning up to the frequency of your imagination which corresponds to a battlefield scene where all action is in slow motion.

The lyrics serve hand in glove with the music and the chorus stands out as a peak-point of the song where you are ‘phantomed’ by the vision of an old, abandoned, industrial building in early 80s Manchester with a sinister ambience to surround you and dust to fill your nostrils leaving you breathless by the ‘coughing up’ of the cathartic level of emotion.
Somewhere in between, Curtis’ voice is continuously trembling to initiate a series of earthquakes that could potentially change the arrangement of the tectonic plates which make up your skull and crack open to reveal whatever is trapped inside; a volcano pouring sizzling lava of passionate nostalgia from your heart.
The exact ‘Where have they been?’ chorus chokingly resonating in your mind as you bring yourself to accept compassion and empathy as the narcissistic vortex of selflessness.

As you near the end of the song, the ‘dust’ in your nostrils is far too much for you to bear and so you are left at the open outside on the Siberian tundra to the pack of wolves which rip your insignificant flesh apart with only your angelic spirit surviving.


You find yourself crying. But for whom?
WWII is long over, and so is Joy Division.
For whom then are you crying?