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Talking about a masterpiece like this is really difficult... I admit it; then many will have read my review on ‘Unknown Pleasures’, so they are probably wondering how the hell can this person review ‘Closer’? To be honest, I don’t even know, but... I’ll try
I listened to this album for the first time in 2004... I was struck by it; like many other fifteen-year-olds, I was going through my existential crisis, and, as happens during such crisis, not only did I not see the light, I couldn't even "glimpse" it, feel it, even if distant, perceive it; I only sensed darkness around me... You can therefore imagine what effect this album may have had on me... it practically heightened my apathy towards life. So, after listening to it all, for the first time, I fell asleep... I didn’t have dreams or nightmares or at least I can’t remember... but I recall feeling very cold (outside and inside the room it was at least 30 degrees) and above all, I had in my head that melody, that funeral march, that damned, dark omen of death...
It's in this way that the "old" Ian leaves us: "No words could explain, no actions determine,
Just watching the trees and the leaves as they fall" (The Eternal)
'Closer' is a truly difficult album to classify, but probably not to understand; we could quickly classify it like its predecessor: dark-punk; needless to say, I disagree... I personally prefer to classify it as dark, just dark and nothing more. What leads me to this statement is the atmosphere that pervades the songs: it, despite not being very far from the "obsessive rhythms" and violent atmospheres of 'Unknown Pleasures', in my opinion, becomes more rarefied, almost ethereal, intangible... sure 'Atrocity Exhibition' is very close to 'Unknown Pleasures' but the pain and the sense of "closed" seem to have something claustrophobic, suffocating... such sensation wasn’t there in "Unknown Pleasures." It's already clear then that this is one of the cardinal points of "Closer": this time there is no escape, this time you can no longer escape death...
Ian is aware of his sad destiny... he doesn't even try to fight his "great disease" as he himself defined it, rather he accepts it. "Isolation"... this song shocked me; what struck me is the incredible contradiction that characterizes it: music sharp and soft at the same time, clear and poisonous voice... this "poetry" is, for me, built in the opposition of happy-sad (music-text)... here too I attribute to such opposites the meaning of "awareness," in fact, if we analyzed this "state of mind" (let’s define it that way...) we could say that when you are aware of something "bad" you are happy and sad at the same time: happy for having accepted what's awaiting, sad because it is "something bad". Obviously, this is my interpretation of this song, when taking the text at face value one immediately thinks of isolation and what it entails... continuing our journey in discovering "Closer," we come across "Passover", "Colony" and "A Means To An End", beautiful songs that only pull you down even more and give you more and more that sensation, or rather, that bad feeling of what is about to happen...
Sorry if I don’t describe them and if I’m rushing, but I want to get to the point: "Heart And Soul, 24 Hours, The Eternal, Decades".
These four songs are the most beautiful that the "dark sensitivity" of a man could have ever produced... I would like to describe them in-depth, unravel them, but sorry, I can’t... I will focus on a phrase and a song: 'heart and soul one will burn...' (phrase from "Heart And Soul") and the song "The Eternal".
The phrase is, in my opinion, one of Ian's most significant, painful, and resigning... I don’t know what he actually wanted to say (maybe I missed an interview or maybe Ian never said it...) but I’ll give you my interpretation: it "is" Ian Curtis’s lucidity in front of his destiny... here it goes beyond simple awareness, here he has the perception, or even the vision of what's about to happen: after all, in the end, Ian decided to burn his heart, but the soul is still here... it lives in these songs... Then there is "The Eternal"... I talked about it at the beginning. It’s a funeral march, accompanying Ian Curtis on his last journey... the sounds always darker and the particularly cadenced rhythm as if to mark every step, every whisper, on that damned rainy and dark foggy day (it’s this weather I think of every time I listen to it...) when the heart is now definitively burned...
I know well that this is not actually a review... more than anything, they are thoughts and impressions, in my opinion, however, sometimes it’s needed, you decide... I think it's easier to list genres and associate bands with other bands (joy division-cure of pornography (?)... etc.) showing one’s musical culture rather than trying in some way to describe what one actually feels...
Tracklist Lyrics and Samples
01 Atrocity Exhibition (06:04)
The silence when doors open wide
Where people could pay to see inside
For entertainment they watch
his body twist
Behind his eyes he says I still exist
This is the way, step inside
This is the way, step inside
This is the way, step inside
This is the way, step inside
In arenas he kills for a prize
Wins a minute to add to his life
But the sickness is drowned
by cries for more
Pray to God make it quick - watch him fall
This is the way, step inside
This is the way, step inside
This is the way, step inside
This is the way, step inside
This is the way
This is the way
This is the way
This is the way
This is the way, step inside
You'll see the horrors of a far-away place
Meet the architects of law
face to face
See mass murder on a scale
you've never seen
And all the ones who tried hard
to succeed
This is the way, step inside
This is the way, step inside
This is the way, step inside
This is the way, step inside
And I picked on the whims of
a thousand more
Still pursuing the path
that's been buried
For years of dead woods and jungles and
cities on fire, can't replace
or relate,
can't release or repair -
take my hand,
and I'll show you what was - it will be.
02 Isolation (02:53)
Be clear every day, every evening
It calls here aloud from above
Carefully watched for a reason
Mistaking devotion and love
Surrendered to self-preservation
For those who just care for themselves
But life as it touches perfection
Appears just like anything else
Isolation
Isolation
Isolation
Mother, I tried, please believe me
I'm doing the best that I can
I'm ashamed of the things
I've been put through
I'm ashamed of the person I am
Isolation
Isolation
Isolation
But if you could just see the beauty
These things I could never describe
This pleasure's a wayward distraction
This is my wonderful prize
Isolation
Isolation
Isolation
Isolation
Isolation
03 Passover (04:46)
This is a crisis I knew had to come,
Destroying the balance I'd kept.
Doubting, unsettling and turning around,
Wondering what will come next.
Is this the role that you wanted to live?
I was foolish to ask for so much.
Without the protection and infancy's guard,
It all falls apart at first touch.
Watching the reel as it comes to a close,
Brutally taking it's time,
People who change for no reason at all,
It's happening all of the time.
Can I go on with this train of events?
Disturbing and purging my mind,
Back out of my duties, when all's said and done,
I know that I'll lose every time.
Moving along in our God given ways,
Safety is sat by the fire,
Sanctuary from these feverish smiles,
Left with a mark on the door,
Is this the gift that I wanted to give?
Forgive and forget's what they teach,
Or pass through the deserts and wastelands once more,
And watch as they drop by the beach.
This is the crisis I knew had to come,
Destroying the balance I'd kept,
Turning around to the next set of lives,
Wondering what will come next.
04 Colony (03:55)
A cry for help, a hint of anaesthesia,
The sound from broken homes,
We used to always meet here.
As he lays asleep, she takes him in her arms,
Some things I have to do, but I don't mean you harm.
A worried parent's glance, a kiss, a last goodbye,
Hands him the bag she packed, the tears she tries to hide,
A cruel wind that blows down to our lunacy
And leaves him standing cold here in this colony.
I can't see why all these confrontations,
I can't see why all these dislocations,
No family life, this makes me feel uneasy,
Stood alone here in this colony.
In this colony, in this colony, in this colony, in this colony.
Dear God in his wisdom took you by the hand,
God in his wisdom made you understand.
God in his wisdom took you by the hand,
God in his wisdom made you understand.
God in his wisdom took you by the hand,
God in his wisdom made you understand.
God in his wisdom took you by the hand,
God in his wisdom made you understand.
In this colony, in this colony, in this colony, in this colony.
05 A Means to an End (04:05)
A legacy so far removed
One day will be improved
Eternal rights we left behind
We were the better kind
Two the same - set free too
I always looked to you.
We fought for good - stood side by side
Our friendship never died
On stranger waves - the lows and highs
Our vision touched the skies
Immortalists with points to prove
I put my trust in you.
A house somewhere on foreign soil
Where ageing lovers call
Is this your goal - your final needs?
Where dogs and vultures eat
Committed still, I turn to go
I put my trust in you.
In you, in you, in you
Put my trust in you, in you
07 Twenty Four Hours (04:26)
So this is permanence, love's shattered pride.
What once was innocence, turned on its side.
A cloud hangs over me, marks every move,
Deep in the memory, of what once was love.
Oh how I realised how I wanted time,
Put into perspective, tried so hard to find,
Just for one moment, thought I'd found my way.
Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away.
Excessive flashpoints, beyond all reach,
Solitary demands for all I'd like to keep.
Let's take a ride out, see what we can find,
A valueless collection of hopes and past desires.
I never realised the lengths I'd have to go,
All the darkest corners of a sense I didn't know.
Just for one moment, I heard somebody call,
Looked beyond the day in hand, there's nothing there at all.
Now that I've realised how it's all gone wrong,
Gottas find some therapy, this treatment takes too long.
Deep in the heart of where sympathy held sway,
Gotta find my destiny, before it gets too late.
08 The Eternal (06:06)
Procession moves on, the shouting is over,
Praise to the glory of loved ones now gone.
Talking aloud as they sit round their tables,
Scattering flowers washed down by the rain.
Stood by the gate at the foot of the garden,
Watching them pass like clouds in the sky,
Try to cry out in the heat of the moment,
Possessed by a fury that burns from inside.
Cry like a child, though these years make me older,
With children my time is so wastefully spent,
A burden to keep, though their inner communion,
Accept like a curse an unlucky deal.
Played by the gate at the foot of the garden,
My view stretches out from the fence to the wall,
No words could explain, no actions determine,
Just watching the trees and the leaves as they fall.
09 Decades (06:09)
Here are the young men, the weight on their shoulders,
Here are the young men, well where have they been?
We knocked on the doors of Hell's darker chamber,
Pushed to the limit, we dragged ourselves in,
Watched from the wings as the scenes were replaying,
We saw ourselves now as we never had seen.
Portrayal of the trauma and degeneration,
The sorrows we suffered and never were free.
Where have they been?
Where have they been?
Where have they been?
Where have they been?
Weary inside, now our heart's lost forever,
Can't replace the fear, or the thrill of the chase,
Each ritual showed up the door for our wanderings,
Open then shut, then slammed in our face.
Where have they been?
Where have they been?
Where have they been?
Where have they been?
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Other reviews
By TenshiSell
Ian Curtis was about to become a living legend. He lucidly chose to limit himself to being a legend.
You collapse to the ground, a scream frees you from a burden.
By Mr.Moustache
It is 1980. Punk is dying and with it the little good music ... when suddenly, in less than a year, an album is about to change the course of contemporary music forever.
The glacial beauty of the album is indisputable due to the ruthless sincerity it suggests.
By andrea biacca
"Closer" is a journey made of nightmares, sadness, physical and mental stimulations; the musical transposition of the agony of the most charismatic leader rock has ever had: Ian Curtis.
All we have left is to listen to this musical masterpiece and appreciate its excellent craftsmanship, both in terms of lyrics and harmonies.
By COX
Closer is the testament in which Curtis invites us to explore the roots of his illness and his apathy towards life.
Joy Division has the power to tear you apart, to gradually consume you with their melody that backs you against the wall and forces you to face reality for what it is.
By popoloitaliano
"A metronome-like drum, a guitar that wearily accompanies the rhythm: simply a masterpiece."
"I only wish that those who approach this album are at least 20% satisfied with what was (I) felt at the time of its release."
