If the stories of Joy Division and New Order are redolent of one quality in abundance, its irony.
As two of the most pivotal British bands of the twentieth century, they once found themselves temporarily eclipsed by the generation of Mancunian bands they’d fostered. Just as famously, rather than open a profitable recording studio as planned, they – being the reluctant members plus assorted Factory alumni – chose instead to create probably the most famous nightclub of its era, a white elephant that would eventually lead to the iconic label’s demise.
That wasn’t all, of course. When you threw in the highly turbulent background of Messrs. Sumner and Hook’s personal relationship, twice weekly crisis meetings around the imminent financial apocalypse of the enterprise which their success had financed was a recipe for conflict.
Even following the release of 1989’s acid house soaked Technique these simmering rifts had opened up to the extent that both went off to solo projects – Hook’s Revenge and Sumner’s triumvirate effort with Johnny Marr and Neil Tennant, Electronic – but when they reconvened as a quartet with Stephen Morris and Gillian Gilbert to work on what would become Republic, they found out the latter had been at it as well.
True to form it’s ironic then that the largely silent partners’ debut album as The Other Two is probably the most rounded and consistent of any of the New Order side projects – although Electronic boasted the superior craft – doubly so that it was delayed to enable the band to complete Republic’s promotional cycle, and that it would itself be released after Factory had slid into an undignified bankruptcy.
Culled largely from material they duo had written during TV soundtrack sessions, left undisturbed Gilbert and Morris felt no pressure to emulate the emotional austerity of their Alma Mater, and The Other Two & You is much the better for it.
Opening track Tasty Fish, with its bubbling synth bass and huge house vamps, was as near perfection in pop terms, but the big surprise however was that Gilbert’s voice was pristine and clear, whilst her and Morris’ songwriting demonstrated a knack for mining a rich seam of melody which would’ve sounded out of kilter in their day jobs.
Accordingly, Selfish is a lustrous, glossy essay in chiding, whilst Feel This Love is more dancefloor orientated but no less crystalline. The presence of two instrumentals was hardly a surprise – the duo were after all members of a band who’d created the best-selling one of all time – but although neither the fizzing techno of Ninth Configuration or the chilled austerity of Night Voice were in the same class as Blue Monday, both were effective counterpoints to the distinctly upbeat material elsewhere.
In many ways this style of alternating their approach between kitchen sink drama and leading-edge technology was a similar one to that taken by fellow survivors Everything But the Girl a couple of years later on their crossover opus Walking Wounded, but The Other Two & You – also ironically – was a commercial failure. Re-released in 2010 with the addition of a clutch of the remixes which gave the pair some brief momentum in America, it deserved better, but for the understated Gilbert and Morris, you suspect that they wouldn’t have wanted the fuss.
The Voice Of Unreason 