Joy Division - Closer

RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK:

Joy Division - Closer

This week’s Recommendation of The Week is a homage, a tribute, and reverence of gratitude to the legacy of Joy Division. “Closer” by Joy Division was their second album and it was released 46 years ago this year. It was their unexpected finale, one of deep, dark internal dissonance and it came with crippling harsh reality. It was released 2 months after Ian Curtis tragically ended his life at the age of 23.

In the years since its release, we’ve come to learn a lot about Ian Curtis’s tragic end, and the moments leading up to it. What is so brutally painful is that the lyrics that would make up this masterpiece would foreshadow his suicide. His words, on first read, seem to be a cry for help, but after reading, especially with the facts of his death, you realize that they were so much darker, so much more serious and were really a release of his pain.

The story of Ian Curtis is one for us all to learn from and to grieve. It is one of music’s most tormented and tragic tales, and one that impacts differently than other “Rock N Roll suicides”.  There were so many, but none like Ian Curtis.

Looking back, now 46 years out, we are still haunted by this crippling reality. There was no “saving” Ian Curtis. From a young age, he was a person who sunk deep in his dark introspection. He suffered from severe depression, he was bipolar, and he had schizophrenic and manic episodes regularly. He was a very complicated person whose personality ran the spectrum of kind and caring to abusive and controlling. One thing was always clear: he was potentially dangerous to himself, on and off the stage.  Self-harm was a big part of Ian’s life, and one that seemed to slip by everyone. Very different times then, and mental health, particularly in cold, industrial Manchester, UK, was not a topic of discussion. No one talked about “feelings”. You just drank or drugged your pain away and got up for work. That’s what Ian did. That’s what Joy Division did.

When he was diagnosed with epilepsy in 1979, it really took its toll on him. That was the final straw and, really, he was already gone. The incredible, brutal irony is that he wrote “She Lost Control” from “Unknown Pleasures” about a girl who had epilepsy and a “fit” he witnessed. As Joy Division’s star was rising, and they were about to embark on their first US tour, Ian was at his end. If you want to read the details of his suicide and his final hours, there is much information in the book “Touching From A Distance” by Deborah Curtis, his wife. It is a sad and brutally painful book about the depths of Ian’s darkness. From experience, it is a hard read, emotionally… one of the saddest tragedies I have ever read, leaving you in darkness yourself.

During the “Closer” sessions, Joy Division were never better. They were tighter, and the music is raw, dark, powerful and really has a pounding beat and rhythm that pulses your inner core.  It is a masterpiece of Post-Punk, and one of the most influential albums ever recorded.

To really speak to the magnitude of Joy Division is to lay tribute to the Gods. They are the musical embodiment of the human condition. They are one of the greatest musically artistic forces that the world has ever known. They are the inception of Post-Punk and the enigmatic muses of Goth, New Wave, and Industrial. Over the last 50 years, it would be nearly impossible to find a band that has had a greater impact on music than Joy Division.

”Closer” is a dark masterpiece like no other. Packaged in artwork, founded in a marble white, minimalist sleeve, drawn to point with a severely tragic tomb carving of a funeral depiction on the front. It is the definition of tragic emotional darkness, cognitive dissonance, and introspective melancholy. It is a cacophony of the spectrum of human emotion… a masterful requiem, steeped in grief and insecurity, culminated with earth pounding rhythmic swells, melodic bass pulses, and synth laden hooks that fuse to a Shakespearian tragedy of the epic proportions.

It is dark.  It is very serious. It is a moment.  It is a reveal into the soul of one of the most tortured singers in music history.  Ian Curtis was 23 when he took his own life, leaving in wake complete shock and devastation.  The remaining members would go on to form New Order and take over the world.

The legend of Ian Curtis and Joy Division will haunt us forever.  The magnitude of “Closer” is something we can appreciate for eternity.

Essential Track: “Twenty-Four Hours”