Known Pleasures

WWJDD?

Please, mess with Mother Nature, already. First we get misty, muggy Mancunian pre-X-mas cheerlessness – making it feel more like Portlandia outside than Austin Stories – and now, on the very day the Alamo screens the fine, dirgey, 2007 Joy Division feature Control, it's looking less Warsaw and all too Sun City, in January no less.

Fine, then: we'll be cloaking in solid black in protest of the gorgeous weather and in memory of the untimely demise of Joy Division frontman/dervish/abstruse genius Ian Curtis, not to mention the official-ish, 2011 demise of Joy Division evolutionaries New Order (this last despite last month's Peter Hook-less, one-off gig at London's Troxy). And yes, we're kicking off the first Monday of the new year by catching director Anton Corbijn's masterful narrative recounting of the doomed Curtis, Barney, Hooky and the whole feel-bad gang's post-punk Manchester tenure at this evening's Alamo Music Monday at the Ritz.

Why (apart from our sheer meteorological contrarianism)? Because Sam Riley is so very excellent as tortured artist Curtis; because Corbijn was one of the great driving forces behind bringing Joy Division to the attention of a post-Joy Division world; and because it seems an all too fitting way to commence the much ballyhooed Beginning of the End. Here's our original review.

Control plays tonight, 10:35 pm, at the Alamo Ritz.