Review:

on 2011-07-07 CharlesMartel Said:

Joy Division set a new standard with their first album, "Unknown Pleasures". The issue with the follow up would be whether they would be able to maintain it. By 1980 the roots of Joy Division had faded and a new musical concept was looming on the horizons. Punk had exploded on the scene in 1977 and ripped through the smug complacency of both the music industry and the music punter. It had brought with it a degree of teenage rebellion unparalleled since the early sixties. And this wasn't just anti-parental teenage rebellion; punk was anti-society teenage rebellion. It had inspired a number of others to take up instruments and form bands, and one of those bands eventually morphed into Joy Division.

"Unknown Pleasures" had introduced to the world a darker side of the so-called New Wave. It had made a conscious effort to be personally depressing instead of just socially and institutionally so. "Closer" was to take that one stage further. Fuelled by the bipolar state of Ian Curtis own mind, "Closer" introduced the world to the dark, depressing and ultimately fatal introspection of a man with clinical depression and epilepsy. The effect that this was to have on successive generations of British non-mainstream music cannot be over-estimated. The implications of Curtis's mental illness still drive a lot of British music to this day. Just listen to Interpol or Editors.

The opener, "Atrocity Exhibition", has a morbidly pertinent relevance today as videos of Saddam Hussein's corpse are placed on You Tube and available on mobile phones - "this way, step inside" is no longer the sick cry of the fairground freak show or the key holder to Bedlam. Now we can download atrocities onto our own computers, watch them time and again, have the friends round for beer and pizza and laugh at it. Curtis was not a prophet on purpose - his own psyche was too tortured for that - but what he sang has come to cast him in that mold. It is hardly surprising therefore that he has become an iconic figure.

Even musically, Curtis appears the prophet. "Isolation" presages the domination of electronic pop in the early- to mid-eighties. He may not have been the creator of this style (John Foxx maybe) or the chief propagator (Gary Numan perhaps) but here it is, ready and waiting to take the world by storm. For Curtis, however, it is a vehicle for further exploration of his own depression as he sings

"I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through
I'm ashamed of the person I am."

From here on in, "Closer" becomes a personal journey round the distress inside Ian Curtis mind. "Passover" sees him explaining how he lurches from one crisis to another, as each imbalance in his sanity disrupts his ability to hold himself together. "Colony" denies his earlier suicide attempt as being merely a forlorn cry for help and backs up the desperation with some frighteningly overpowering bass and guitars. "A Means To An End" offers the forlorn hope that an external power will rescue him. Curtis'S marriage was under stress at the time due to his affair with a Belgian journalist and this just added to the pressure he was facing.

These days, we tend to forget the importance of track listing on CDs in relation to their vinyl predecessors. The opening track on the second side of the original vinyl sets the scene for much darker music. "Heart And Soul" takes away any lingering comfort: hope is an illusion; reality is unrecognisable; and life is meaningless - witness "Twenty Four Hours" and "The Eternal". The album closes with "Decades" in which Curtis seems to distance himself from the inevitable. He places himself as an observer watching as his life implodes and he gives up the will to carry on.

If this review so far has made you feel miserable then it should. This album offers a rare autobiographical glimpse into the world of mental illness. The danger is that the album will always offer the listener an opportunity for a prurience which should be avoided. What enables the listener to avoid that is the music accompanying the lyrics. The music fits the mood perfectly. Sparse and bleak, it is driven by the cold beauty of synthesisers and underpinned by an often frighteningly repetitive bass. The drums sound like they were recorded in a steel box  a padded room with all the padding ripped out perhaps. The only thing which lets the album down is the production. In many ways the album was years ahead of its time and it would be years before production techniques were able to catch up with where they needed to be to express fully the misery, the despair and the beauty that is "Closer".

This is not, and was never meant to be, an easy album to listen to. I would not recommend this to anyone who may be feeling down, lonely or upset. Yet its place in musical history is as important as its content. Joy Division were the first post punks and, like others who died before their time, Ian Curtis's suicide would cement his place in the musical firmament where he felt he never truly belonged.
Rating: 9/10

on 2008-09-03 dscanland Said:

Great brief review xtal. I agree, deserves much more than 5 stars. I think it probably is the pinnacle of Joy Division's albums. Check this album out if you like anything such as Interpol, I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness or She Want's Revenge.
Rating: 10/10

Review:

on 2008-09-03 xtal Said:

Just browsing through the classic albums on the site and had to give Closer a little more love than 5 out of 10. Closer was one of those random music purchases I made years ago, and I'm very glad I did. When I picked it up I had only known Joy Division from hearing two or three songs here and there ... I really knew nothing about them.

It took a while to appreciate the smaller things on Closer, like just how much music it has influenced over the past 3 decades, that sparse, eerie production work by Martin Hannett, [disclosure: I just googled to check if there was one or two "t"s in Hannett and his Wikipedia page describes his production as "sparse and eerie" ... right after I typed that. Creepy!] and really just the band's ferocity as a unit.

Every track here burns, from the serious-as-hell opener "Atrocity Exhibition" to the seething "Isolation", the doomed yet dancy "Colony", right to the painful closer "Decades"; whatever the proverbial "it" is never seems to stop coming at you. Morris' drums are produced with absolute precision, Hook and Sumner wield their respective axes with commanding presence, and Ian Curtis... nothing can be said about his words. They can only be listened to.
Rating: 10/10