The decade in which I was born has given me a strange perspective on its music. I discovered pretty much all of the 70’s sounds – from prog rock to punk to disco – well after they came into the world. It wasn’t until the late 80’s that I discovered what I was missing. I would characterize the decade as one where budding genres leaped off their inspiration pads and came to fruition. For the month of February, Mental Jukebox will feature some of these gems with a different 70’s song each day. #28DaysOf70sSongs
The album title Unknown Pleasures is an appropriate one. The record is full of sounds and explorations never heard before. Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Hooky and Stephen Morris all did things on it that were truly inventive and inspirational for bands and instrumentalists, even still today. One of the more well known tracks, “She’s Lost Control”, was infectious, but far from accessible — and that’s what I love most about it.
There’s something strangely addictive about the song. It starts with an unusual drum part from Stephen Morris, which feels deliberately industrial. In the film biopic Control, Morris is seen spraying an aerosol can into the mic to manufacture the signature sound. Then things get even weirder with Hooky’s mesmerizing bass line played way up high on the neck. The oddness continues as Curtis stumbles in singing about a woman who suffers from epileptic seizures — and it seems he’s having one himself as he sings it. This leaves us with Bernard Sumner who’s busy carving out a grating riff that’s lower than Hooky’s bass line. It’s a strange composition that I can’t seem to stop listening to once I start.
“Confusion in her eyes that says it all. She's lost control.”