Peter Hook & The Light @ O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire

Play it again, Hooky!

27-09-14

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Kicking off with a Joy Division warm-up in the early evening hours of last Saturday evening, Hooky soon took the Empire by storm. Masterfully building up on the broodiness, from Atmosphere to She's Lost Control, via Isolation and Shadowplay, the playing was fierce and cathartic - this tempestuous trip down memory lane seemingly wrapped up way too quickly.

© www.peterhook.co.uk/

Enter part 2 and the New Order era, resolutely more positive and upbeat, but with sonic links running deep: Hook's confidence and dynamism as a bass player and band leader were a constant throughout, and the sunniest of New Order riffs winked at a well-rooted Manchester melancholy. He soon had the notoriously blasé London audience cavorting with drunken joy, the way you rarely see it do (maybe with the likes of, let's say, The Manic Street Preachers) with the succession of The Perfect Kiss, Subculture, Confusion, Paradise, Bizarre Love Triangle, a moody Elegia and a gorgeous True Faith, sweet like candy.

Old fans of the band(s) walked around with Hooky t-shirts and youngsters too young to have experienced Ian Curtis's spastic on stage dancing declared their obsession with Joy Division. It was a win-win situation, and we lost control. Again.