About

Closer is the second and final studio album by English rock band Joy Division, released on 18 July 1980 by Factory Records. Produced by Martin Hannett, it was released two months after the suicide of the band's lead singer and lyricist Ian Curtis. The album reached No. 6 on the UK Albums Chart, peaked at No. 3 in New Zealand in September 1981, and No. 2 in Greece during August 2020. Closer was also named NME Album of the Year. It was remastered and re-released in 2007. Today, Closer is widely recognised as a seminal release of the post-punk era. Following the release of the non-album single "Love Will Tear Us Apart" in June 1980, the remaining members re-formed as New Order.

-

By the time their second album, Closer, was released only a few months later, Curtis had taken his own life. The clues were on the record, in Colony's "a cry for help, a hint of anaesthesia/ the sound from broken homes, we used to always meet here" and 24 Hours' "Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away." It wasn't until much later – via Deborah Curtis's book and the Control film – that we were allowed the full, tragic details of Curtis's tailspin into worsening epilepsy, prescription drug-contributed depression and domestic turmoil. The Manchester band's hurtling journey had taken them from Warsaw – a proto-punk band who'd played Lou Reed covers and sported feather cuts and embarrassing moustaches – to 1980's stunning final album inside three years.

Back then, music was developing at a fast pace – disco towards rap and hip-hop; funk and reggae towards world music; punk into post-punk. Closer was a quantum leap from Unknown Pleasures, and sounded unlike anything else. Guitar tracks such as Colony and A Means to an End sounded angular, brutal and unforgiving, almost chilling in their terrifying beauty. But then the deceptively perky Isolation was mutated disco, which pointed the way towards electro-pop and the surviving members' regroup as New Order. 24 Hours, where Peter Hook's mournful bass intro leads into a guitar-raging whirlpool, is still the definitive Joy Division anthem.

Then there's the spectral serenity of the synthesiser tracks, truly emotional music made with machines. The whiplash drumbeat and haunting, sub-bass shadows of Heart and Soul; the almost classical serenity of the piano-led, funereal The Eternal; the awesome Decades, Curtis gazing sorrowfully at human suffering and warfare's "doors of hell's darker chambers", burdened by insights and events far beyond his years and his voice almost ghostly, a one-time punk with a new, Frank Sinatra-like croon. It took three or four plays to fully hit home. But I can still remember an open window, the sun streaming on to my Fidelity UA4 stereo and a thought hitting me then that remains unchanged 31 years later: I love this album more then any music ever. For me, Closer contains the saddest, most beautiful music ever made. – The Guardian