Peter Hook & The Light Turn a Cold Liverpool Night Into a Post-Punk Resurrection

Desh Kapur
Nov 14
4 min read

Liverpool Olympia, 13th November 2025

WORDS AND IMAGES DESH KAPUR

Peter Hook & The Light Turn a Cold Liverpool Night Into a Post-Punk Resurrection — Photo Credit Desh Kapur

A cold, Liverpool night turns into a cathedral of bass, nostalgia and pure Mancunian defiance.

A masterclass in how to honour the past without embalming it. Cold outside, blazing inside — Hook’s return burns bright.

It was the kind of Liverpool night that feels aggressively personal — cold and miserable enough to make you question every life choice between leaving the house and arriving at the Olympia. But inside the venue, steaming coats were peeled off and pint glasses clinked as a near-capacity crowd of every age imaginable packed in to see Peter Hook — the man whose basslines practically rewired British music — return to the stage after shoulder surgery. If anyone had doubts about how he'd hold up, they evaporated the second he strode out, grin intact, bass slung low where it belongs.

Set One: “Get Ready” Gets Its Due

Hook doesn’t do things by halves, and tonight he reminded everyone of that with a front-to-back performance of Get Ready — the album that marked New Order’s rebirth after years of silence and internal friction. Back in 2001, Get Ready arrived like a punch in the ribs: gritty guitars, bruised electronics, and a band rediscovering its bite after a decade of slicker, club-friendly releases. It wasn’t the shiny synth utopia of Technique, nor the melancholic shimmer of Republic — it was New Order plugged back into the mains, crackling with urgency.

Hearing it live, in full, gave the record a new clarity. Tracks like “Crystal” and “60 Miles an Hour” hit with the ferocity of a band reclaiming their identity, while deeper cuts — the ones most fans never expected to hear live again — suddenly felt essential. Hook’s signature low-slung basslines rolled through the Olympia like thunder, dragging each song into sharper focus than the studio versions ever allowed. The Light didn’t treat Get Ready like a museum piece; they treated it like a living, snarling beast.

What could’ve been a niche, fan-service warm-up instead felt like a long-overdue victory lap for an album that’s spent two decades being underrated. And in the hands of the man who helped define that era’s aesthetic, Get Ready finally got the heavyweight treatment it has always quietly deserved.

Set Two: The Hits, The Hauntings, The Heartbreak

If the Get Ready set was the ignition, then the second half of the night was the full detonation. After a brief pause — long enough for the crowd to wipe sweat from brows and grab another pint — Hook returned with a look that said right then, let’s get to the heavy stuff. And heavy it was.

The opening notes of “Incubation” fell like a cathedral door closing. There’s something almost ritualistic about hearing Joy Division live in 2025 — not nostalgia, but a shared act of remembrance. Hook let the track breathe, his bassline aching beneath the vocals, and for a moment the Olympia felt suspended in time. Phones stayed down. People stood still. It was the closest you can get to hearing a ghost speak.

“Shadowplay,” “Warsaw” “Transmission” — each one played with a ferocity that younger post-punk revival bands would kill for. Hook’s delivery wasn’t polished and didn’t need to be; the cracks and grit in his voice made the songs feel rawer, more lived-in, more earned. Joy Division’s material always carries danger in its bones, and tonight it snapped at the air with teeth.

But Hook isn’t here just to haunt us. He’s here to remind the room that these stories didn’t end in 1980.

Cue the synth lines. The shift into New Order territory was electric — the joy after the storm. “Your Silent Face” came first, sending a surge of energy through the crowd, and by the time “Blue Monday” dropped, generations were dancing side by side: twenty-somethings losing their minds, fifty-somethings rediscovering their knees, and everyone else moving in that strange, wonderful way that only this band can provoke.

The Light handled the material with absolute respect but zero preciousness — “True Faith,” “Ceremony” “Dreams Never End” — each one hit with club-night euphoria delivered by a rock band who understand groove better than most DJs. Hook’s bass carried every song like a pulse, a reminder that half these melodies were born from those four heavy strings.

And then, of course, the inevitable, glorious gut punch.

“Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

You could feel the air shift as it began — that mixture of sadness, celebration, and communal catharsis. Hook didn’t milk the moment, didn’t dress it up. He just played it straight, with weight and honour. And the Olympia sang it back like a hymn.

This wasn’t a greatest-hits set.

It was a reckoning, a release, and a reminder that few musicians carry a legacy as heavy — or deliver it as generously — as Peter Hook.