Joy Division: Ian Curtis (vocals); Bernard Sumner (guitar, keyboards); Peter Hook (bass); Stephen Morris (drums).
Personnel: Ian Curtis (vocals); Bernard Albrecht (guitar, keyboards); Stephen Morris (drums).
Recording information: Britannia Row Studios, London, England (02/08/1980).
Photographer: Bernard Pierre Wolfe.
If Unknown Pleasures was Joy Division at their most obsessively, carefully focused, ten songs yet of a piece, Closer was the sprawl, the chaotic explosion that went every direction at once. Who knows what the next path would have been had Ian Curtis not chosen his end? But steer away from the rereading of his every lyric after that date; treat Closer as what everyone else thought it was at first -- simply the next album -- and Joy Division's power just seems to have grown. Martin Hannett was still producing, but seems to have taken as many chances as the band itself throughout -- differing mixes, differing atmospheres, new twists and turns define the entirety of Closer, songs suddenly returned in chopped-up, crumpled form, ending on hiss and random notes. Opener "Atrocity Exhibition" was arguably the most fractured thing the band had yet recorded, Bernard Sumner's teeth-grinding guitar and Stephen Morris' Can-on-speed drumming making for one heck of a strange start. Keyboards also took the fore more so than ever -- the drowned pianos underpinning Curtis' shadowy moan on "The Eternal," the squirrelly lead synth on the energetic but scared-out-of-its-wits "Isolation," and above all else "Decades," the album ender of album enders. A long slow crawl down and out, Curtis' portrait of lost youth inevitably applied to himself soon after, its sepulchral string-synths are practically a requiem. Songs like "Heart and Soul" and especially the jaw-dropping, wrenching "Twenty Four Hours," as perfect a demonstration of the tension/release or soft/loud approach as will ever be heard, simply intensify the experience. Joy Division were at the height of their powers on Closer, equaling and arguably bettering the astonishing Unknown Pleasures, that's how accomplished the four members were. Rock, however defined, rarely seems and sounds so important, so vital, and so impossible to resist or ignore as here. ~ Ned Raggett
CLOSER is the second and final album by Joy Division, arguably the most influential U.K. band of their generation. Arriving just months after lead singer Ian Curtis' suicide, it stands as a fragile document of one man's despair, as much as a definitive statement by a band at the height of their powers. While Joy Division's much-lauded debut, UNKNOWN PLEASURES, demonstrated their transformation from shambolic punks into a tight, highly focused quartet, CLOSER cemented their status as musicians at the vanguard of modern rock. Introducing a more vibrant and expansive sound palette--adding mournful pianos and funereal strings--the album is a sprawling, poignant last chapter of a band that seemed, at the time, to have unlimited potential for greatness.
Whereas UNKNOWN PLEASURES' interplay of light and shadow was daubed in contrasting layers of chiaroscuro, CLOSER is saturated with the harsh industrial glow of fluorescent light. Adding modernizing touches in the form of synthesizers--whether chirping like cicadas or forming elliptical, stuttering arpeggios--their efforts presaged later attempts at the marriage of rock and electronics by synth-pop and new romantic groups. But the band has never sounded as brutal or savaging as on the art-damaged opener "Atrocity Exhibition"--a grinding blitzkrieg of guitar shrapnel exploding in all directions, furious tribal rhythms, and Curtis intoning, "this is the way, step inside." Plumbing the depths of alienation, the steely-cool precision of "Isolation" reflects Curtis's growing detachment from a life that's spinning further from his control. Which all leads up to the closer, the epic drama of "Decades"--a slow-boil funereal dirge that builds to a stunning conclusion, it will leave no doubt about the enduring power of one of the most vital groups of the'70s. minimize