It's been a while since i've written here and as i've finished university for the year I figured i'd return to this blog as I did enjoy writing here.It was quite theraputic and enjoyable, unfortunatly not quite like this album.
Don't get me wrong I love Joy Division, a fantastic band that met the most tragic of ends far to soon. What I meant was with Joy Division, your never going to get a Kaiser Cheifs happy go lucky catchy album, instead a very dark depressing album.
Closer is the second, and final album composed under Joy Division, before their totured genius of a frontman tradgically committed suicide after a battle with epilepsy, divorce and depression.
The album reads so strongly like a suicide note it's impossible to see how no-one suspected the end coming so soon. His lyrics throughout are such a cry for help that the event which would place them in music memoirs everywhere is so forseeable.
The track opens with "Atrocity Exhibition" a dark industrial 6 minute track which swirls under powerful drums and synths to curtis proclaiming "this is the way step inside" repeatedly over the top. It picks up where Joy Division last left off on Unknown Pleasures.
The album then takes an electronic turn in the brilliantly dark, but danceable "Isolation" where Curtis's tortured lyrics ring through the audience showing his suicidal side so to speak through incredibly heartfelt and honest lyrics " I'm doing the best that I can/I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through/I'm ashamed of the person I am." This song also gives off an early new order feel which suggests that with or without curtis, the band would of persued an electronic sound in the future, further shown in the track "Heart & Soul."
The album has such a sparse feel to it that it's doom and gloom feel is hightened to an almost spooky degree, further adding to the impeding message that this album would constantly reflect in the future.
The album is a brilliant coherent listen that stays with you long after you listen to it. There is not a poor track on the album, each one is a classic in it's own right and although we would give anything for them to have recorded more albums under Joy Division, Closer is an album which most bands would never hit the hights of in a lifetime, let alone two albums in and therefore by no means a bad album to finish on.
This album will always be tied down to is the demise of Curtis. From the bleak lyrics, sparse melodies and the unfortunate gravestone artwork, it shows the artist at the end of his rope, but my God did he display it in a fantastic art form.
JOY DIVISION: CLOSER
SCORE = 8.9/10
Track Scores
1.Atrocity Exhibition = 1
2.Isolation = 1
3.Passover = 3/4
4.Colony = 3/4
5.A Means To An End = 1
6.Heart & Soul = 1
7.Twenty Four Hours = 1
8.The Eternal = 3/4
9.Decades = 3/4
KEY TRACK: Isolation
p.s you may have noticed that I didn't do number 70. It was an awful jazz record which I felt was not worth writing about so I skipped it and wrote about something far more interesting :)
