Track Listing

1. Atrocity Exhibition
2. Isolation
3. Passover
4. Colony
5. Means to an End
6. Heart and Soul
7. Twenty Four Hours
8. Eternal
9. Decades

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #99654 in Music
• Released on: 1990-10-25
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.com
In retrospect, the second and final album by this Manchester postpunk band seems to point straight at singer Ian Curtis's suicide, which happened a few months before it was released. The band's reverberating mesh of minor-key lines and Curtis's tremorous bass voice are doomy enough on their own, and attention to the words reveals references to blacker-than-black stories by J.G. Ballard and Joseph Conrad; the void and its terrors were splitting Curtis apart from the inside. "I put my trust in you," he sings, and his voice leaves no doubt that that trust has been betrayed. But the music, grim and powerful as it is, points to the direction the surviving members took as New Order, incorporating the mechanical gravity of club rhythms. --Douglas Wolk

Customer Reviews

Closer is still unmatched
Why buy "Closer" ?

(1) It's the best album from Joy Division - one of the best bands of the post-punk (end of 70s - beginning of 80s) and one of the most influential - you have a whole universe of musicians who'll recognize the impact of Joy Division in their music

(2) You'll never forget it - once you listen (with your full attention) the songs and the ambience will never leave you; you can enjoy the album or hate it, but it will have a major impact

What is "Closer" ?

Joy Division started in 1977, as Warsaw, and quickly improved its sound (with the help of producer Martin Hannet from Factory Records) to its impressive debut album "Unknown Pleasures" (1979). Powerful songs were released only in EPs ("Transmission", "Atmosphere"), and "Closer"'s release was scheduled to happen just after Joy Division's 1st US gig - a trip that did not happen due to the suicide of Ian Curtis in 18 May 1980. The posterior release of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (EP) and "Closer" was seen as a 'final message' from Ian. Ok, but even without knowing Ian's background and personal life, you can enjoy the strenght of the lyrics, the atmosphere created by the music and the beauty of all this together.

Here is a rapid review of the songs, but a quick note: the original release (in vinyl) has no particular order for the sides (no A/B); songs 1-5 were in one of the sides, 6-9 in the other.

1. Atrocity Exhibition: Deriving its title from a J.G. Ballard book, it 's a powerful song that sets the tone for the whole album (4 songs last more than 5 min), and the line "This is the way - step inside" speaks by itself

2. Isolation: In this song you can see again a common pattern: each instrument starts at a different time, each going its own way, then, when they're all together, a new pattern emerges, which will support Ian's voice; this song's eletronic front will make you sing together with Ian "But if you could just see the beauty ..."

3. Passover: This song starts playing with the slowing down of the beat, setting a tone of desperation that goes on through the next 2 songs; the guitar makes a poignant appearance

4. Colony: The acceleration of the rhythm in this song will make you anxious, just to meet ...

5. Means To An End, A: This song will mess you up ... the speed changes, the beat, and the lyrics ... sparse, but setting a sense of defeat: "I put my trust in you" ...

6. Heart And Soul: Now we start a new journey ... the keyboard comes back to the front, the beat starts cutting through, the voice changes and now you have the impression of someone looking at things from far away, already detached from it ... it's simple and beautiful

7. Twenty Four Hours: Now the speed and the urgency come back, but for no purpose at all ... everything is lost

8. The Eternal: You never heard anything like it ... slow, compelling ... you feel like you're in a dream ... or a funeral procession ... again an instrument comes cutting through, now the piano ...

9. Decades: The closing of the album, a judgement of the past, with a powerful beat and keyboard, wonderful voice effects, it will leave a final and lasting impression on you, together with the question: "Where have they been ?"

My favourites are 1,2,6,8,9 ... you'll have yours ... as soon as buy it, which of course you must ... then tell others about it ... I listened to it in 1986 ... and still think the best album ... ever ... no other album even tries to follow it, it would not work; it's a product of an English group in 1980 in an independent label, although its beauty is not dated and stands unmatched now and forever.

It will make you wonder what might have been.
Joy Division formed in 1977 and released its first album in 1979; this album was recorded and released in 1980. It sounds no more like a rushed album than it sounds like a young band's second album. Veteran artists spent years recording albums that aren't half as good.

People will argue from now until eternity whether it was Joy Division, Bauhaus, or Siouxsie and the Banshees who first turned punk on its side to create goth, but by 1980 the movement was clearly visible, and this, Joy Division's crowning achievement, may be the first great goth record.

Joy Division singer Ian Curtis was a David Bowie fan, and, because of the content of the lyrics and because Curtis had committed suicide by the time this album was released, Closer is generally regarded as the story of a rock 'n' roll suicide.

The album tells a story well. The only question is whether it is Curtis' own story -- we'll never know for certain.

The album starts off with a horrifying picture of Joy Division's act. "For entertainment they watch his body twist. Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist,'" the epileptic Curtis sings in "Atrocity Exhibition." Curtis, whose act imitated seizures, occasionally had seizures onstage and the audience usually thought it was part of the act. The ineffective treatment of Curtis' epilepsy and the resulting depression is a constant theme throughout his work, but especially here.

Songs such as "Isolation," "A Means to an End," and "Heart and Soul" paint a picture of ever-growing bleakness, a story of broken dreams, love lost, and blurred vision. It peaks with "Twenty Four hours":

So this is permanent, love's shattered pride / What once was innocence, turned on its side / A cloud hangs over me, marks every move / Deep in the memory, of what once was love

Oh how I realized how I wanted time / Put into perspective, tried so hard to find / Just for one moment, I thought I'd found my way / Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away

A song of dreams lost to destiny, hinting at what was to come, leading right into a pair of slow, gentle, requiem-like songs: "The Eternal" and "Decades." The lyrics to "The Eternal" suggest Curtis may have been envisioning his own funeral, while "Decades" suggests someone looking back over a life that ended in disappointment all too soon.

The glimmer of hope that opened up "Unknown Pleasures," ("I've been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand/Could these sensations make me feel the pleasures of a normal man?") extinguished, this album abruptly completes the journey.

Many buy Joy Division's compilation album "Substance," hoping for a greatest hits-type collection to compile all of Joy Division's essentials. It's a mistake. True, neither of Joy Division's radio-friendly singles are on this album, nor are "Dead Souls" and "In A Lonely Place," the obscure tracks made famous by their cover versions in the "Crow" movies. In spite of this, "Closer" is *the* essential Joy Division album, period.

Eternal Music
The presiding reason I hate so much of so-called popular music is its lack of honesty. If you have the misfortune of listening to a song by Celine Dion then you will have learnt absolutely nothing about her(or your) emotional life. You would have been better off listening to the vacuum cleaner or the washing machine. With Joy Division all you get is honesty - searing, disturbing honesty, that gives a sense of the capabilities of music. This album is a great work of art. If you like this, maybe you would appreciate Public Enemy, or John Coltrane, or some of the song cycles by Schubert, however unlikely these recommendations may sound - or even the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Carl Dreyer, or Samuel Beckett's prose or that of John Hawkes. You've got to take great art where you can find it.