or those of you who saw Michael Winterbottom's wonderful Twenty-Four Hour Party People, you'll recall A Certain Ratio as the Tony Wilson's protégées who performed in scout uniforms while Joy Division looked on in contempt. The movie obviously doesn't take the band too seriously (though the Wilson character—and the real Wilson, for that matter—certainly does). But ACR was no slouch. They had considerable success in the 80s, first in the sort of post punk, funk-meets-noise-meets-pop vein that is reminiscent of (though distinct from) Wire, The Buzzcocks, and (yes) Joy Division, and then as a sort of eclectic, improvisational version of New Order. I haven't heard enough of their music to adequately address their merits vis-à-vis the larger Manchester scene, so I won't even try to do that. However, I can tell you that The Graveyard and The Ballroom, their 1980 cassette-only debut (which has just been released on the Soul-Jazz sub-label Universal Sound), is not only a very interesting historical document but also a pretty entertaining album in its own right.

The work is split into two distinct halves. The first, "The Graveyard," is a collection of seven 4-track demos produced by the legendary Martin Hannett (again, see the movie); the second, "The Ballroom," consists of seven live tracks from a show ACR performed in support of Talking Heads. These two, really distinct works were originally packaged together and released as a cassette-only release on Factory Records in 1980. Various tracks from these releases showed up on subsequent albums (including Early). However, this is the first time the entire work has been made widely available. But there's more: two "bonus tracks," including ACR's first single, "The Thin Boys." So, as a purely historical document, this is a pretty valuable release.

But this is also a very entertaining, albeit strange, album. It was created around the same time Joy Division was working on their two studio albums, and the often morbid lyrics here are certainly reminiscent Ian Curtis' suicidal tomes ("Do the Du," the opener here, begins, "My heart was just an open sore / Which you just picked at 'till it was raw"). The comparisons to Joy Division stop at the lyrical stage, however, as The Graveyard and The Ballroom is all about the funk. The lyrics on "Do the Du" might be depressing, but the band frames those lyrics around a really interesting funk groove, which features both a crisp bass line and odd, echoing effects. It's a catchy song that grows more interesting after repeated listens reveal the subtle ways Hannett used erratic guitar licks and studio weirdness to surround the groove with a cloud of claustrophobic noise that ties neatly to the lyrics. The other six songs that make up "The Graveyard" aren't quite as successful as this first track, but they (like the first) grow more compelling with repeated listens, and they are all worth checking out.

I'm not quite as impressed with the live tracks. Yes, the musical quality is there, and there's even a hint at ACR's later penchant for experimentation with rhythm and horns, but the music seems less compelling to me. This is partly due to the fact that the sound quality here is really poor and partly because the music (the songs) here is simply less interesting than the music on the first half of the album. Hence, I find moments within each song interesting (like the weird noise fart in "I Fail"), but I find the songs as a whole generally inferior.

In the end, though, I have to say I'm impressed with A Certain Ratio. They might not have been the most successful or even most innovative band from Manchester, but this album proves that they were an interesting and exciting band in their own right, regardless of what Michael Winterbottom's movie might suggest.