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Closer | 
| Artist: Joy Division
Label: London
Category: Music
New (25) Used (3) from £4.27
Rating:  39 reviews
Sales Rank: 3630
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
UPC: 639842821926
EAN: 0639842821926
ASIN: B00002DE4E
Release Date: April 12, 2006
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| Tracks:
| • | Heart And Soul | | • | Twenty Four Hours | | • | Eternal | | • | Decades | | • | Atrocity Exhibition | | • | Isolation | | • | Passover | | • | Colony | | • | Means To An End |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
In retrospect, Closer, the second and final album by this Mancunian band, seems to point straight at singer Ian Curtis's suicide, which happened a few months before it was released. The band's reverberating mesh of minor-key lines and Curtis's bass voice are gloomy enough on their own, and attention to the words reveals references to blacker-than-black stories by JG Ballard and Joseph Conrad; the void and its terrors were splitting Curtis apart from the inside. "I put my trust in you," he sings, and his voice leaves no doubt that that trust has been betrayed. But the music, grim and powerful as it is, points to the direction the surviving members took as New Order, incorporating the mechanical gravity of club rhythms. --Douglas Wolk
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| Customer Reviews: Read 34 more reviews...
The Highest Human Achievement June 19, 2008
Essential. Peerless. This is the end product of millions of years of evolution. A terrible, cold beauty that stands as testament to the meaninglessness of existence. Play it at your sister.
 song by song review April 10, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful
im editing this after listening to it about 10 times now.
Atrocity Exhiition - like it. curtis sounds like he's in the room with you
Isolation - one of JD's best songs and perhaps best use of a synthesiser ever?
Passover - good
Colony - brilliant.
Means - fantastic. great bass. you could dance to this and no doubt curtis did.
heart & soul - lot of echo on ian's voice. great drumming. a very good track.
24 hrs - takes a while to get into but a good track.
eternal - deep song.
decades - the best song on the album and one of the great musical achievements of the last or indeed this century. in a word - masterpiece. the whole band at their best. ian looking at the nature of existence itself. you will question life itself after listening to this.
definately top 10 album. unfortunately cant change it to a five star.
'Leaders of Men' December 22, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Still sounding years ahead of its time, `Closer' has a reputation for coldness, for despair and for grim Northern doom-and-gloom, but I don't hear anything like that. I hear tough, life-affirming, FIERCE rock music, and while there's not much in the way of fun to be had here, it's not obligatory to have to take it so seriously.
The songs are (mostly) reflective and searching, but none of them are `dirges'. You could even dance to a couple of them, although you might struggle, knowing what happened just a few short weeks after it's completion.
Martin Hannett's production is excellent, giving each song a clear and clean-ness, which allows every detailed lyric to bite home, to reach every nook and cranny of your psyche. In every sense we must participate in the pain, but we know that ultimately, by suffering it, this music (and very few others) breathes victory into our lives. It's beauty cannot bring anything but positives to our existence.
A lot has been written about 'Closer' in an attempt to mystify and mythify it, most of it gleefully encouraged by Tony Wilson and co at Factory Records, and while I'm not going to de-bunk all that, you should really take it all with a pinch of salt, for what it is. A (brilliantly successful!) marketing ploy.
Which is not to say 'Closer' is meaningless, devoid of point. Far from it. It means more to me, and a lot of other people, than I can possibly describe in a few short (admittedly brilliant!) paragraphs.
A big part of my life (still...sorry.), and always will be, 'Closer' is a true great, not stained in any way by the decades (sorry again.) of hyperbole which have followed it around.
Buy it twice.
A 40 minute long suicide note. November 30, 2007
In her book "Touching From A Distance",Ian Curtis' widow writes that if she'd really read carefully the lyrics to "Closer",she would have realised how ill he really was.
Still,despite it's frightening intensity,it's well worth a spin,perhaps not if you're actively mentally ill.Ian Cutis' lyrics,are,to put it mildly,confessional-I'd hate to have been his mother-but the music is equally as bleak and dark as the lyrics,they complement each other.
It's unlikely you'll hear anything as intense as this again,especially as we now know that Curtis' death was only a few weeks after "Closer"'s release.
This is about the original album/CD,there's a remastered version with a live CD thrown in for good measure.Haven't heard it,so can't comment.
What can I say? October 23, 2007
Its hard to explain the immense weight of this composition, especially in the light of the multitude of adoring fans who have seen fit to quite rightly accord this piece 5 stars.
Objectively as a piece of music this work is definitive and masterful. It is painfully revealing and oozes the desperation of a tortured and confused soul who went on to engineer his own infamy in a carefully planned suicide. Whilst the album uncomfortably states the state of mind of the composer, the work of Messers Hook and Sumner are phenomenal. The greater allocation of auditory time to both bass and drums has allowed both Morris and Hook to blossom and never have I heard such an integrated perfection of those two instruments put down on tape. This is a powerful, solemn piece of work which hints at genius, especially with the likes of Isolation, Means To An End and my personal favourite, Decades. It is interesting to note that this album does not listen well split up, but is infinitely better listened to from beginnning to end. Just remember to take a happy pill after.
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