As promised, Peter Hook and his band The Light opened the first half of the night with ‘Get Ready‘ in full – New Order’s 2001 release, marking its 25th anniversary this year. It’s the record that brought the band back after an eight-year intermission, and the one that gave us ‘Primitive Notion’ and ’60 Miles an Hour’. Hearing it start to finish was fantastic, and The Light did it justice, as expected. Hook’s been running this outfit since 2010, built around his son Jack Bates on bass, Paul Kehoe on drums, Martin Rebelski on keys and David Potts on guitar. Hook mentioned from the stage that they’d only landed that afternoon, straight into a three-hour show, and you really wouldn’t have known it.
Down in the pit, everyone was pretty reverent about the sprawling setlist. The room is filled with a whole spectrum of fans from decades-deep completionists to people who just needed another chance to catch ‘Blue Monday’, and somehow everyone gets exactly what they came for. I love that Peter Hook & The Light do that, this band exists precisely to bring joy, whichever era of the catalogue you showed up for. In between, strangers were singing full-volume into each other’s faces, arms around shoulders, dance, dance, dancing.
Hook dedicated ‘Isolation’ to Ian Curtis, telling the room it was Curtis’s favourite just before the band eased into it. Joy Division and New Order have just been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and Hook has dedicated the honour to Curtis at every moment. From ‘Isolation’, to ‘Disorder’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’, it was a long, extremely generous row through both bands’ catalogues, everyone in the room clocking each song’s opening within seconds and reacting accordingly, Hook’s bass carrying the melody throughout while everything else fills in around it. You can see how deep he digs to deliver us those lyrics.
It was three hours, with two distinct halves, and in a room that never once felt like it was flailing. If you’ve got a chance to catch this tour anywhere else on the run, go! Find someone to dance with!
