The Iconic Joy Division Beat That Anchors New Order’s “Age Of Consent”

When the remaining members of Joy Division chose to carry on following the death of the band’s singer, Ian Curtis, their future was uncertain. Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris, along with Curtis, had already transformed rock music when, on the eve of their first North American tour, Curtis killed himself.

So the others regrouped as New Order, later joined by keyboardist Gillian Gilbert. By the time New Order released Power, Corruption, and Lies (1983), the band had transitioned from post-punk to synth-pop, pioneering yet another genre.

“Age Of Consent”, the LP’s opening track, is propelled by Hook’s persistent bass line and contains echoes of Joy Division’s bleak musical style. And though it’s the sound of a group of musicians moving forward, it nods to the past, it seems, one final time.

“Love Will Tear Us Apart”

Morris’s drum groove was recycled from Joy Division’s defining song, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Produced by Martin Hannett, the song documents Curtis’s troubled marriage.

When routine bites hard,
And ambitions are low.
And resentment rides high,
But emotions won’t grow.
And we’re changing our ways,
Taking different roads.

But in “Age Of Consent”, Sumner narrates a different kind of broken relationship. He’s ready to leave his partner, but can’t bring himself to say the painful words.

And I’m not the kind that likes to tell you,
Just what I want to do.
I’m not the kind that needs to tell you,
Just what you want me to.

Returning to “Love Will Tear Us Apart”, Morris’s drum kit was recorded live, but the stiff repetition foreshadows New Order’s experiments with drum machines and samplers. In the studio, Hannett had pushed for complete control of the instruments. The same kind of machine-like manipulation that would define future New Order hits like “Blue Monday” and “Bizarre Love Triangle”.

Anyone’s Ghost

Power, Corruption, and Lies was the follow-up to New Order’s debut, Movement. It marked a slow shift from Joy Division, a band that proved to be both a force and a transition from punk to post-punk and later, new wave.

“Age Of Consent” became the connective tissue between both bands and the genres they unwittingly pioneered. And with the appropriated beat, the song feels like a metaphorical conversation between ghosts.  

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