| Closer | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Joy Division | ||||
| Released | 18 July 1980 | |||
| Recorded | 18–30 March 1980 at Britannia Row Studios, Islington, London | |||
| Genre | Post-punk | |||
| Length | 44:16 | |||
| Label | Factory | |||
| Producer | Martin Hannett | |||
| Joy Division albums chronology | ||||
|
||||
Closer is the second and final studio album by the English post-punk band Joy Division, released 18 July 1980, two months after the suicide of lead singer Ian Curtis. The album was originally scheduled to be released on 8 May 1980. The record was originally released on the Factory Records label as a 12" LP and reached #6 on the UK Albums Chart. It also peaked at #3 in New Zealand in September 1981. It claimed the number one slot on NME Album of the Year, and was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.
The album cover was designed by Martyn Atkins and Peter Saville, with photography from Bernard Pierre Wolff. The photograph on the cover is of the Appiani family tomb in the Cimitero Monumentale di Staglieno in Genoa, Italy, by Demetrio Paernio.
Contents |
Closer, produced by Martin Hannett, features a sound which is both lusher and more sombre than the band's previous album, Unknown Pleasures, with more use of synthesizers and studio effects. Many of its songs have a despairing, funeral feel, and its cover art appears to reflect this, although it was chosen by Peter Saville before he had heard any of the music. Both the cover art and the bleakness of the music and lyrics amplified the already strong mystique surrounding the album after Curtis' suicide.
The opening track, "Atrocity Exhibition", shares its title with The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard,[1] a book that Curtis read and loved, but only after writing the bulk of the song. Several of the songs on Closer feature a down tempo vibe and droning synthesisers, such as the final two tracks "The Eternal" and "Decades". Keyboards (including Mellotron) are featured predominantly on four of the album's nine tracks, a trend the surviving members would extend in their subsequent incarnation, New Order.
Closer, along with Unknown Pleasures and Still was remastered and re-released in 2007. As with Unknown Pleasures and Still, the remaster comes packaged with a bonus live disc, recorded at the University of London.[2]
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Uncut | [3] |
| Allmusic | [4] |
| Spin | [5] |
| Pitchfork Media | (10.0/10) [6] |
| Robert Christgau | (A-) [7] |
| Q | [8] |
| Rolling Stone | [9] |
The album has been highly acclaimed, and is often cited as being Joy Division's finest work. It has made a number of best-of lists; for example, it was ranked 10th on Pitchfork Media's "Top 100 Albums of the 1980s"[10] and 72nd on NME's "100 Greatest British Albums Ever". A reviewer from Pitchfork Media remarked "Closer is even more austere, more claustrophobic, more inventive, more beautiful, and more haunting than its predecessor. It's also Joy Division's start-to-finish masterpiece, a flawless encapsulation of everything the group sought to achieve", and gave the album a perfect 10.0. In 2003 the album was ranked at number 157 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In 2006, Q magazine placed the album at #8 in its list of "40 Best Albums of the '80s".[11]
All songs written by Ian Curtis, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and Bernard Sumner.[12]
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||