Peter Hook to perform New Order, Joy Division material in SoCal

I've been looking forward to these shows since the initial announcement last spring. I happened to catch their September 2011 show at the El Rey Theater in LA after my interview with Hook (find it elsewhere on this blog) and was mesmerized. 
  
Starting this weekend, Peter Hook & The Light return to Southern California to perform complete albums from the New Order and Joy Division catalogs in concert (sets and shows are below).

This month marks the first time the band is performing New Order’s third and fourth albums, Low-Life and Brotherhood in the United States.

The latest jaunt is the The Light’s fourth of North America following two very well received Joy Division album tours of Unknown Pleasures and Closer and their tour of New Order’s Movement and Power, Corruption & Lies last year.

SoCal concerts will include the singles and B-sides from New Order’s most prolific period. From August 1983 up to 1987, taking the audience from “Confusion” to “True Faith,” with both Low Life and Brotherhood performed in full alongside all the other tracks from that fans consider New Order’s greatest period including “Thieves Like Us,” “Bizarre Love Triangle,” “The Perfect Kiss” and more.

The Light will also be supporting themselves at the concerts performing a selection of Joy Division material prior to the album performances.

By the time “Blue Monday” and “Temptation” were released during this Eighties period, New Order had grown in confidence and attained increasing success in the UK and internationally. Praised for their creativity, boundary pushing and consistent touring, the albums saw the group finding their niche and signature sound, fusing their rock, indie style with new emerging electronic equipment and bringing melody and emotion to their techno experiments. Both the singles and the albums for this period stand out as some of the finest work ever produced by the band.

Marking the high period of New Order artistically, the critical plaudits heaped upon Power, Corruption & Lies was followed by similar notices for Low-Life and Brotherhood, considered as a trio, the band’s greatest albums which were achieved through a period of intense hard work which brought significant results and advancements.

Having raised their profile with “Blue Monday,” still the biggest ever selling 12” in history, the band continued to define their status with their diffident attitude to promotion, Peter Saville’s iconic design and their disregard of mid Eighties video culture and the MTV generation.

With FAC 51 The Hacienda Club open in Manchester, the band decamped to New York in 1983 to work with Arthur Baker, who co-wrote and produced the first two singles from the period “Confusion" and "Thieves Like Us."

Arthur famously dance floor tested "Confusion" prior to release in ‘The Fun House’, one of New York's most famous underground clubs where the video was later filmed. The subsequent single became many fans’ favorite record, the effortless, timeless shimmering beauty of “Thieves Like Us”.

Releasing Low Life in 1985 alongside epic single “The Perfect Kiss”, whose 9 minute 12 inch mix, full of peaks and troughs is considered one of the best of the decade, the romantic club sounds of Low Life and its playful sense of humour has made many regard it as New Order’s most complete single album.

Aside from the singles, the album contains many great records that have entered the canon, including “This Time Of Night,” “Sunrise,” “Elegia," “Sooner Than You Think,” and the album’s closer “Face Up,” an energetic club track.

With the band now signed to Quincy Jones’ Qwest label in the States, they began to tour internationally to ever increasing capacities. Their transatlantic success underlined by the appearance of songs “Elegia,” “Thieves Like Us” and “Shellshock” on John Hughes “Pretty In Pink” film soundtrack in 1986, as well as the uniquely stylised videos which accompanied the singles.
Coupling the release of “State Of The Nation” to Brotherhood in September 1986, the first single was superseded by the band’s biggest international hit since 1983, the musical landmark “Bizarre Love Triangle” which broke the band fully through to North American, international and even Australian audiences.

Brotherhood itself took a unique approach, splitting the rock side of the band to the first side of the album, with tracks “Paradise”, “As It Is When It Was” and “Way Of Life,” whereas the flips side was electronic, taking in the two singles and also “Every Second Counts,” a finely tuned electronic ballad regarded as the counterpoint to “Leave Me Alone.”

Hook & The Light’s current concerts run up to 1987, when New Order enjoyed their biggest international hit “True Faith.” Some seven years after the demise of Joy Division and a decade on from first forming, the band had come full circle to hit heights never thought possible.

Southern California tour dates:

11/22 Henry Fonda Theatre, Los Angeles, CA (Low Life and Brotherhood)
11/24 The Glass House, Pomona, CA (Movement and Power, Corruption & Lies)
11/25 The Roxy, West Hollywood, CA (Unknown Pleasures and Closer – with special guests) - Sold out
11/26 House Of Blues, San Diego, CA (Low Life and Brotherhood) 

Purchase tickets: 

ticketfly.com
livenation.com
axs.com

More information:

peterhook.co.uk
facebook.com/peterhookandthelight
youtube.com/peterhookandthelight