Released:

18 July 1980

Rating:

Genre:

goth rock

Quotable:

Notable for “its impact on the subsequent goth movement – a paradigm shift for punk music.” ^ZS

Album Tracks:

Atrocity Exhibition
Isolation
Passover
Colony
A Means to an End
Heart and Soul
Twenty Four Hours
The Eternal
Decades

Total Running Time:

43:59

Sales (in millions):

sales in U.S. only --
sales in U.K. only - estimated --
--
sales worldwide - estimated --

Peak:

peak on U.S. Billboard album chart --
peak on U.K. album chart 6

Singles/Hit Songs:

Song (date)

Notes:

In DMDB Book(s):

Awards:

Closer

Joy Division

Review:

“Joy Division was at the height of their powers on Closer, equaling and arguably bettering the astonishing Unknown Pleasures.” ^AMG If their debut “was Joy Division at their most obsessively, carefully focused…Closer was the sprawl, the chaotic explosion that went every direction at once.” ^AMG “Rock, however defined, rarely seems and sounds so important, so vital, and so impossible to resist or ignore as here.” ^AMG Closer is a “masterpiece” ^RV known for “its impact on the subsequent goth movement – a paradigm shift for punk music.” ^ZS

The album “journeys through a bleak songscape of hopelessness and loss,” ^RV a fact which caused the album to be more scrutinized the wake of lead singer Ian Curtis’ suicide. As such, the album “is pervaded by a sense of eerie beauty, like the still before the storm.” ^PR Curtis’ vocals “haunt the stark, minimalist backdrop like a troubled earth-bound spirit, pleading for release.” ^PR “The tracks would be in danger of grinding to a complete standstill, enthralled by their own spectral grandeur” ^PR if not for “the momentum secured by [Peter] Hook’s melodic” ^PR and “icy bass lines” ^RS500 alongside the “occasional flashes of overdriven” ^PR and “droning guitars.” ^RS500

What also lifts the album is that it is “dark, depressed and innovative.” ^ZS “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.” ^AMG The end result is a “harrowing and emotionally raw testament” ^ZS and “one of the most chilling albums ever made.” ^RS500

Lead song Atrocity Exhibition “sets the tone for the album's sound: metallic rhythms, damaged synthesizers and jagged guitars are laid bare against brutal and sparse lyrics.” ^RV It “was arguably the most fractured thing the band had yet recorded, Sumner’s teethgrinding guitar and Morris’ Can-on-speed drumming making for one heck of a strange start.” ^AMG

Isolation

“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.” ^AMG

Twenty Four Hours (audio)

“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.” ^AMG On “the jaw-dropping, wrenching” ^AMG Twenty Four Hours “Curtis embodies despair and pleas for an escape from loneliness. It’s a declaration of frustrated rage that remains subtle with unrelenting eerieness.” ^RV That song and Heart and Soul are “as perfect a demonstration of the tension/release or soft/loud approach as will ever be heard, simply intensify the experience.” ^AMG

Heart and Soul (audio)

Review Source(s):

^AMG All Music Guide review by Ned Raggett
^RV The Review “100 Greatest Albums of All Time” by Clarke Speicher (October – November 2001; Vol. 128: numbers 12-23).
^PR Paul Roland (2001). CD Guide to Pop & Rock. B.T. Batsford LTD: London.
^RS500 Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
^ZS Zagat Survey (2003). Music Guide: 1,000 Top Albums of All Time. Coordinator: Pat Blashill. Music Editor: Holly George-Warren. Editors: Betsy Andrews and Randi Gollin. Zagat Survey, LLC: New York, NY. Page 136.