JOY DIVISION: CLOSER (1980)
1) Atrocity Exhibition; 2)
Isolation; 3) Passover; 4) Colony; 5) A Means To
An End; 6) Heart And Soul; 7) Twenty Four Hours;
8) The Eternal; 9) Decades.
General verdict: Ian Curtis' Personal
Inferno, all nine circles provided.
It may be observed that, unlike the
somewhat fanatical adepts of the «hardcore» approach, those bands that started
out under the regular punk banners (around 1976-78), unless they simply
imploded (like the Sex Pistols), tended to reach their «maturity stage» fairly
soon — sometimes very soon, so that you really have to go all the way
back to the earliest singles of The Police or The Cure, for instance, to
understand where they were coming from. For all these people, the punk
revolution ultimately served as a formal pretext, an initial floating lifesaver
that helped them get used to the waters. By 1980, punk à la Clash was
pretty much as dead as the Kennedys, and in its place we simply had a whole new
generation of art-rockers, with new horizons to explore. Some of these original
punkers were cautious optimists and dedicated progressives, which led them to
experimenting with world music and avantgarde. Others were pessimists and
painted their waters squid black, worshipping at the shrine of Jim Morrison but
also updating his vision for the contemporary era with its intellectual demand
for less clichéd lyrical imagery.
In this context, Joy Division's Closer could be regarded as belonging to the same class as early records by Siouxsie & The Banshees, The Cure, Bauhaus, and numerous lesser acts commonly classified as «doom rock», «Goth», etc., and, in fact, Closer is frequently listed in the higher ranks of lists like «top 20 greatest Goth rock albums». However, as it often happens with trend-setting, genre-defining albums, the intentions behind its release never included setting any trends or defining any genres — everything simply revolved around the songwriting talents of the band members and the inner demons of Ian Curtis, overfed and ready to tear their host body to pieces by early 1980. If anything ever drove the band forward, it was a desire to overstep the boundaries of the formula developed on their previous album. Unknown Pleasures was already a masterpiece behind their belt, but it was really «dark pop», a record on which the songs were still too short, too much influenced by their punkish past, too reliant on classic structure — and so, in the good tradition of art rock, the next record had to focus on the elements that made Joy Dvision what it was, untying all the birthcords. There was no intention to release anything specifically flashy or theatrical, anything image-centered: just a little something that would help them completely stand out from all the rest. They had the experience, and the talent, and the means of production, so why not? They did not even realise at the time that they were all lending Ian Curtis a hand in writing his own musical testament.
With the exact same classic lineup,
the exact same producer (Martin Hannett), the exact same record label, and the
exact same city of London (only the studio was different), it is amazing just
how much textural and melodic difference the band managed to introduce,
especially considering that, according to most common sources, they arrived at
the studio in March 1980 with no new material whatsoever, and had to work most
of the stuff from scratch. Hannett's production values do remain largely the
same, with Sumner's guitar having an «industrial» sheen to it and Curtis'
vocals retaining a cavernous echo most of the time; not all of the band members
were pleased with this, but that is the way the Joy Division sound has gone
down in history anyway.
It may seem curious that the album,
obviously much less accessible than Unknown Pleasures, ended up
selling far better and going as high as #6 on the UK charts (as compared to a
ridiculous #71 for Unknown Pleasures). However, there were two external
factors that must have predicted the success. First, obviously, was the suicide
of Ian Curtis on May 18, which made the reclusive and deranged frontman one of
the most talked about people in Britain for a brief while. Second was the
release of ʻLove Will Tear Us Apartʼ as a single in June: the song, a bouncy
and quite romantic-sounding (never mind the dark thoughts at the core) piece of
New Wave pop, became a smash hit, and certified both the ensuing success of Closer
(although I do wonder how many people who went out and bought it due to
admiration of ʻLove Will Tear Us Apartʼ got themselves quite a nasty shock upon
seeing themselves locked in a sonic crypt with Ian's ghost) and, for
that matter, the future of the Ian-less Joy Division as New Order. Without
these two factors driving up sales, Closer would hardly stand a
commercial chance, although critical reception would probably have been
rapturous all the same.
Unlike Unknown Pleasures, Closer
can take some time to set in properly. The songs are slower, longer, more
repetitive, less flashy, and even more dependent on atmosphere — not a
comfortable kind of atmosphere, either. A kind of atmosphere created by a
24-year old man with the mind of an 80-year old Dr. Faust, fed up with and let
down by all of earthly pleasures, Closer is an album about the end of
The World — where The World is understood from a purely personal perspective,
and the distinction between The World outside and The World inside the
protagonist is completely irrelevant (and, as existentialist philosophers like
to tell you anyway, there can be no difference established between «the end of
me» and «the end of the universe»). This is the kind of musical album that
Schopenhauer might have produced, were he a musician in the rock era, and not
everybody wants to feel like Schopenhauer. In a way, I guess, you'd have to put
yourself into an Ian Curtis frame of mind in order to completely «get» and «savor»
the record, and that might not end well.
Although the record did not
originate as an intentionally conceptional suite, common thematic threads run
through all of it, and the overall flow is near perfect. The first song tells
us that "this is the way, step inside", and there is little doubt as
to the location of the place to which we are invited: Sumner's guitar lines,
consisting mostly of frantical industrial scraping, suggest incessant suffering
and torture, while Morris plays a complex, but fully robotic percussive pattern
that suggests some merciless cog grind — this is Hell, either literally so, or
just the private Hell in Ian's own mind (remember, there's really no
difference). There is a formalistic explanation of ʻAtrocity Exhibitionʼ —
about how it was influenced by the works of J. G. Ballard, and how Ian's lyrics
summarize his «condensed novel» approach — but it would hardly make sense if
Ian was just writing about J. G. Ballard and not himself. Maybe Sumner, who, as
he himself would confess later, often missed the point of Curtis' words, did
take the inspiration for those grating avantgarde guitar parts from J. G.
Ballard, but in any case, they fully agree with — at least, they are extremely symbolic
of — Ian's state of mind at the time, and the track is a perfect intro to
whatever follows, even if it is hardly among my favorites (for lack of
subtlety).
What follows is a huge tract of
emotional wasteland, formally divided into separate tracks but setting more or
less the same mood. If Joy Division were merely a backing band for Curtis,
things would have been difficult: Curtis was more of a poet than a songwriter,
and probably even more of a poet than a singer (despite the eerie similarities of
his low voice with Jim Morrison's, he could do fewer things with it, and could
never have as much power or precision as Jim at his best). Fortunately, though,
the band members were interested in setting Ian's poetry to inventive
music, and after a while, when you have had your big fill of Curtis and your
attention begins drifting away towards the instruments, you will probably see
how different the songs are from each other. Melodic ideas and cool
combinations of ideas are everywhere — look at the awesome contrast between the
heavy, doom-laden bass line and the Kraftwerk-ian synthesizer lead line of ʻIsolationʼ;
revel in the menacing snap of the bass melody of ʻPassoverʼ (the little swoop
at the end of the main four-note riff seems like a helldog biting at the
protagonist's trousers); acknowledge the jagged angular roughness of the
post-punk guitar/bass duet of ʻColonyʼ; feel the thrilling suspense of the
soft, but inescapably dangerous bass pattern of ʻHeart And Soulʼ, around
which the synthesizers quietly moan and groan in a ghostly fashion... I could
go on, but the fact is, despite setting similar moods, all these tracks have
their individual voices as well. And it's not that easy — in the case of The
Cure, for instance, it took them almost a decade to make each song on a given
album ring out with its own voice (Joy Division took less than two).
With all this melodic brilliance in
sight — and I do mean brilliance: Hook's bass work, in particular,
should rank among the world's finest exercises in meaningful minimalistic
melodicity — it is almost reluctantly that we turn again to Curtis and his
demons, but they do complete the picture, and the best tracks on the album are
still the ones where he manages to give a particularly memorable performance.
On ʻColonyʼ, for instance, a song about the slashing cruelty of loneliness, the
climactic part arrives with Ian's screams of "God in his wisdom took you
by the hand, God in his wisdom made you understand!..." — that's when he
realizes that it is the will of God that he endure that cruelty, and makes it
felt with all the desperation that he can muster (again, Jim Morrison, with his
overall stronger physique, could have made that sound even more powerful, but
give the kid a break). On ʻHeart And Soulʼ, on the contrary, he quiets down his
voice to match the equally quiet menace of the music, and the chorus mantra of
"heart and soul, one will burn" becomes one of the most chilling
moments in Joy Division history. The song never really rises above the volume
of eerie whisper, but you can easily sense that fire and brimstone are just
around the corner, all the time. (I particularly like how this is hinted at by
the sudden increase in volume of Morris' drumming at 5:06 — just as the song
begins to fade out... it's like they're sparing you the actual meeting with the
rapidly approaching Doom, so in the end you can only fantasize about how that
one would have looked).
For all of the atmospherics,
though, Closer is actually a much more energetic and rocking record than
it emerges out of all the verbal descriptions — the first seven tracks are all
based on loud drum patterns, fast-rolling bass grooves, distorted riffage, or,
in the case of ʻIsolationʼ, synth-pop hooks, so it is largely the sameness of
mood and the relatively slow tempos that are responsible for its dirgey
reputation. And, of course, the last two songs. ʻThe Eternalʼ stands out
as the band's most ambitious dig into The Transcendental: the song moves on
slowly and gravely, like a silent funerary procession in the days of The Black
Plague, to the electronic instrumental hum that imitates medievalistic choir
singing, over which we superimpose the Dark Angel piano melody — and Curtis'
quietest, softest, and scariest singing ever: there are but two verses, one of
which describes the "procession", and the second of which turns to
the narrator itself ("cry like a child, though these years make me
older...") — meaning that the "procession" is really an allegory,
as the hero is witnessing his own funeral in his head. This solemn atmosphere
(created by the most minimal means) is only matched by ʻDecadesʼ, where the
band goes for a bit of a crescendo effect to create a grand finale — after all,
here Ian is trying to speak up for his entire generation ("here are the
young men, well where have they been?"), implying that his own troubles
are, perhaps, everybody's troubles. There's no particular bombast, merely a few
minor key keyboard overdubs that collectively create and gradually amplify the
ultimate feel of desolation and hopelessness and complete the album's journey
from initial pictures of cruelty and brutality to final sentiments of coldness
and death-in-life.
In short, this is Ian's personal
journey through his own version of the Nine Circles of Hell, and you could
probably attach a special name to each one — just off the top of my head,
here's a try: Cruelty (ʻAtrocity Exhibitionʼ), Loneliness (ʻIsolationʼ),
Madness (ʻPassoverʼ), Seclusion (ʻColonyʼ), Disillusionment (ʻA
Means To An Endʼ), Fatalism (ʻHeart And Soulʼ), Agony (ʻTwenty Four
Hoursʼ), Mourning (ʻThe Eternalʼ), and, finally, Cosmic
Grief (ʻDecadesʼ). In other words, a fairly jolly party record, this one —
do not forget to bring it to all the birthdays and weddings you are invited to,
just to remind people of, you know, that other
side of the coin.
On the critical side — like most of
the «grand statement» albums made by young, barely experienced, artists with
limited musical training, Closer inevitably suffers from the «grasp
exceeding the grip» factor. Where Unknown Pleasures, for all its
individuality and innovation, was still very much a pop album, firmly grounded
in punk aesthetics, and did not require a lot of musical experience, Closer
moves into the ambitious fields of art rock, where the technical limitations of
the players and the singer become felt much more acutely. Thus, the songs tend
to be long, but the groove never changes, and unless you manage to fall under
its hypnotic spell really quickly, the probability of getting bored soon begins
to grow exponentially. I remember it well myself, how Unknown Pleasures
used to feel entertaining, whereas Closer just had too many
yawn-inducing moments, and, indeed, even now I think that at least some of
these tracks are better appreciated on a symbolic / intellectual level than on
gut feeling level (ʻAtrocity Exhibitionʼ is amazingly well constructed, but I
still believe it makes you think of torture chambers rather than feel
yourself inside one). And while Ian's singing in general clearly comes from the
heart and is well compatible with the sonic textures of the album, I do admit
that it is all on a one-way street, and I would certainly have welcomed more
tracks on which he deviates from the «Prophet Ezekiel» formula (like ʻThe
Eternalʼ).
Not everybody is a fan of Martin
Hannett's production, either (even Sumner himself used to grumble that he'd
committed the same mistakes here that he did on Unknown Pleasures). On
the whole, the claustrophobic, echo-laden sound, where you seem to be trapped
in some underground bunker and the voice of Ian comes to you from the cracks of
the concrete ceiling above, seems to be the right kind of sound for Joy
Division in general and Closer in particular. But ever so often, it
gives the album a lo-fi, homebrewn feel that does not ideally agree with the
personal apocalypse grandiosity of the design, and I can't help wondering
whether ʻAtrocity Exhibitionʼ or ʻColonyʼ would not have sounded even more
impressive and devastating in the hands of some other producer (like Daniel
Lanois, for instance). Not that it does not have a unique sound — in a way, it
is one of the sounds that pretty much defined the post-punk era — but I am not
completely sure that it is the kind of sound that would ideally reflect
whatever was going on in the mind of the band's frontman. Though it did come...
closer.
In light of a recent relisten to Nirvana's
Nevermind, it makes sense to compare the «living death fantasies» of Ian
Curtis and Kurt Cobain — different tempers, different musical preferences, but
ultimately similar goals and purposes. Of course, Joy Division's take on the
issue of emotional necrosis is much more subtle than Nirvana's — far more
symbolist and complex lyrics, subtler sonic techniques, lack of direct gut
appeal to a mass teen audience — and this is why appreciating Closer
requires a much more refined taste (fortunately for me, my own understanding of
how to appreciate it has not in any way decreased my fondness for the more «populist»
approach of Nirvana), and, on the whole, probably goes better with a small
volume of Kierkegaard or Nietzsche than the collected works of William S.
Burroughs. But on the other hand, there might be a much easier way to enjoy it
without any formal academic preparation. The only thing you really have to do
is to purge your mind (for a while) of all positive thoughts, shut out the
sunlight, and stare at that album cover for a few minutes, all the while asking
yourself the question: «How would it feel to be buried alive in something like
that?». And then you just press play... and the next morning, nothing really
looks the same any more.
Sidenote / post-scriptum: The 2007
special edition of the album adds an entire bonus disc of a live show recorded
on February 8, 1980, at the University of London Union, where the band was
already debuting a large chunk of titles from Closer, mixed with various
oddities (curiously, only one song from Unknown Pleasures) and played to
dedicated and highly supportive fans (which you can tell not merely by the fact
of continuous applause, but also by shouts of people requesting ʻLove Will Tear
Us Apartʼ from the front rows — a song that had not yet even been released
officially). The sound quality is fairly awful (clearly not a soundboard
recording), and on the whole, material from Closer does not easily lend
itself to live performance by a small band (ʻThe Eternalʼ suffers worst of all,
primarily due to the lack of piano), but the show still remains a
priceless historical artifact.
About wondering how "Colony" might have sounded in someone else's hands - the version that they did for John Peel actually does sound significantly different from the album version. The guitars are a lot darker and murkier, and overall the song sounds even more doom-laden than the album version. Even the lyrics in the first two verses are quite different and arguably just as evocative.
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