'Temptation' - New Order (1982)

“Up, down, turn around,

Please don’t let me hit the ground. 

Tonight I think I’ll walk alone,

I’ll find my soul as I go home.”

Songs about walking home alone. Those are my favourite songs. (He says, with the right to change his mind at any time, so don’t hold me to it.) See also The Smiths’ ‘Rusholme Ruffians’ (“Though I walk home alone, my faith in love is still devout”) and The Wedding Present’s ‘My Favourite Dress’ (“A long walk home in the pouring rain, I fell asleep when you never came”).

Can’t get enough of them. 'Now That’s What I Call Some Good Songs About Walking Home Alone.’ I’d buy that album. (Are you listening record companies?)  

Of course, this is because I’ve spent far too much time traipsing around on my lonesome. Let’s just say it’s through choice and there’s a certain romanticism to it. (Except it’s not always. And for ‘romanticism’ read ‘bitter sting of rejection’.)

New Order’s ‘Temptation’ remains one of the most perfect songs to me. And marries my favourite theme of long walks home alone, with my second favourite theme of not being able to remember the colour of people’s eyes (“Oh, you’ve got green eyes; oh, you’ve got blue eyes; oh, you’ve got grey eyes”). It’s another of those songs that seems to capture one Saturday evening in March 1989 quite perfectly. The answer was she had grey eyes. Well, kind of more silver, but let’s not ruin my memory of the song.

Classic enigmatic Peter Saville cover.
With the band's name nowhere to be found. 

P.S. If you like your indie frontmen in white shorts, you'll love this performance from the archives...

'Unknown Pleasures' - Joy Division (1979)

"I’ve walked on water,

Run through fire.

Can’t seem to feel it anymore."

You’re Factory Records. Design maestro Peter Saville is creating the most wonderfully enigmatic record sleeves for you. May as well have a go at redesigning the traditional cassette case. By basically super-sizing it. And making it much more purple-y.

The vinyl junkies all bemoaned the loss of great sleeve art with the advent of CDs, and now again with downloads, but it was always cassette artwork that niggled me. The completely different dimensions always meant the sleeves were simply shrunk or poorly cropped. Few labels went to the trouble of producing specially designed cassette sleeves that truly celebrated the songs within.  

When Factory came to reissue the Joy Division and New Order albums in 1985, they addressed this issue. Entirely for my sake, I’m sure. The results were, as befits Factory, completely unworkable. A case too large and fragile for the cassette sections of most stores – they were always wedged in to the shelves of Our Price and took a mighty battering from folk yanking them in and out. The three I have all sit awkwardly in my collection to this day – waiting for colleagues that will never join them. But ‘Unknown Pleasures’ does come with two lovely textured postcards – with the classic cover image now replicated as silver on white. So every cloud has a … "No, no Michael – let’s leave it there, before you embarrass yourself."      

Spotify linky:

Joy Division – New Dawn Fades