In my blurbs about Joy Division’s work, I expressed a bit of reticence, not because the music wasn’t good but rather because I just wasn’t quite feeling love. Well, now I’ve listened to New Order’s Movement, and by golly, this is love.

I don’t want to say my immediate embrace of New Order over Joy Division is because it’s more upbeat, but that’s definitely a factor. The production is relatively flat, even muffled, compared to the cavernous Unknown Pleasures and the raw Closer, and although the lyrics are a pristine and emotive depiction of grief in the wake of Ian Curtis’s suicide (“We’ll change these feelings, we’ll taste and see but never guess how the him would scream” are the final lyrics in the opener, and it’s wrenching), they aren’t quite on the all-time legendary tier as Ian Curtis’s distilled, white-hot pain. But there’s just something about how these songs move, their jammy structure, and, yes, their danceability, that creates this alchemy of what should be sub-Joy Division parts into gold. I really dig it.

So much of my appreciation comes from just how exploratory these songs are. The sound of a Joy Division album is scraping, tearing, clawing: things hidden under the surface being brought to the surface violently; New Order’s Movement tunnels neatly down until it finds crags and crannies strange enough to camp out in and catalogue every tactile ridge. Tracks like “Senses” and “The Him” are obsessed with the tiny permutations that come out of rock music on a loop. It’s mesmerizing.

As still a relative newcomer to both Joy Division and New Order, it’s hard to tell what will be the favorite in the long run. Movement is certainly the most immediate of the output that I’ve heard so far, but it’s entirely possible that years will trade that immediacy for some new or reappreciated shape in Unknown Pleasures. As for right now, though, I’m still a bit hesitant to call myself a committed Joy Division fan; sign me right up for New Order.