Line #88 Music/Closer


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/2_closer.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350: ''"Mother, I tried, please believe me.\
3	I'm doing the best that I can."'']]
4
5	->''"Existence well what does it matter?\
6	I exist on the best terms I can.\
7	The past is now part of my future,\
8	The present is well out of hand.\
9	The present is well out of hand.''\
10
11	->''Heart and soul, one will burn.\
12	Heart and soul, one will burn.\
13	One will burn, one will burn.\
14	Heart and soul, one will burn."''
15	-->-- "'''Heart and Soul'''"
16
17	''Closer'' is the second and final studio album by Music/JoyDivision, released in 1980 through Creator/FactoryRecords. Recorded at Music/PinkFloyd's Britannia Row studio and once again produced by Martin Hannett, it came out a mere two months after frontman Ian Curtis' suicide.
18
19	Compared to its predecessor ''Music/UnknownPleasures'' the songs are even more dour and decidedly more experimental, with four of them (in order, "Isolation", "Heart and Soul", "The Eternal", and "Decades") making prominent use of haunting synthesizer arrangements that would serve as the groundwork for the surviving bandmates' work as Music/NewOrder. Note that these four tracks were written in early 1980; the other five songs, which are more rockist in composition, were realized fresh off the heels of ''Unknown Pleasures'' during the latter half of 1979.
20
21	Like ''Unknown Pleasures'' before it, ''Closer'' was not supported by any singles upon release. However, it does contain a number of fan favourites, including "Isolation", "Colony", and "Heart and Soul".
22	----
23
24	!! Tracklist:
25
26	[[AC:[=FACT25=] A]]
27
28	# "Atrocity Exhibition" (6:06)
29	# "Isolation" (2:53)
30	# "Passover" (4:46)
31	# "Colony" (3:55)
32	# "A Means to an End" (4:07)
33
34	[[AC:[=FACT25=] B]]
35
36	# "Heart and Soul" (5:51)
37	# "Twenty Four Hours" (4:26)
38	# "The Eternal" (6:07)
39	# "Decades" (6:10)
40	----
41
42	!! Bonus Disc (2007 Remaster) (Live):
43
44	# "Dead Souls" (4:58)
45	# "Glass" (3:42)
46	# "A Means to an End" (4:00)
47	# "Twenty Four Hours" (4:05)
48	# "Passover" (4:53)
49	# "Insight" (4:01)
50	# "Colony" (4:04)
51	# "These Days" (4:17)
52	# "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (3:13)
53	# "Isolation" (4:41)
54	# "The Eternal" (6:30)
55	# "Digital" (3:14)
56	----
57
58	!! Principal Members:
59
60	* Ian Curtis - lead vocals, melodica
61	* [[Music/NewOrder Peter Hook]] - bass, guitar
62	* [[Music/NewOrder Stephen Morris]] - drums, percussion
63	* [[Music/NewOrder Bernard Sumner]] - guitar, synthesizer, bass
64	----
65
66	!! ''Here are the young men, the tropes on their shoulders'':
67	* AccentuateTheNegative: It's a Joy Division album. There's no talking about sunshine and rainbows here.
68	* AlternateAlbumCover: Barring the Factory US release, most early CD versions of the album omit the small black square framing the cover art, and London Records' CD release gives the cover and liner notes a yellow tint. Allegedly, the tinting is meant to reflect how the album was released in the United States, but actual official copies on both Factory US and Qwest Records are just as white as UK copies (assuming the package designer hadn't found an LP sleeve that oxidized over the years).
69	* AncientGrome: Invoked with the album cover photo of the tomb and the font choice. The catalog number on the back cover is even in Roman numerals.
70	* ArsonMurderAndJaywalking: "Atrocity Exhibition":
71	-->''You'll see the horrors of faraway place''\
72	''Meet the architects of law face to face''\
73	''See mass murder on a scale you've never seen''\
74	''And all the ones who try hard to succeed''
75	* BrokenPedestal: How the person in "Decades" views himself:
76	--> ''Each ritual showed up the door for our wanderings,''
77	--> ''Open then shut, then slammed in our face.''
78	* CerebusSyndrome: The album starts grim, and gets progressively gloomier throughout the set, ending with songs about the funeral of a social outcast and a visit to hell, which he is promptly rejected from.
79	* ChildHater: "The Eternal":
80	-->''Cry like a child, though these years make me older\
81	With children my time is so wastefully spent\
82	A burden to keep, though their inner communion\
83	Accept like a curse an unlucky deal''
84	* ComeToGawk: "Atrocity Exhibition" is about people who pay to see a barely living man in an asylum:
85	--> ''Asylums with doors open wide,''
86	--> ''Where people had paid to see inside.''
87	--> ''For entertainment they watch his body twist.''
88	--> ''Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.''
89	* ConceptAlbum: The record seems to tell a narrative of an asylum patient being publicly humiliated for others' amusement, spiraling deeper and deeper into depression, killing himself, descending into Hell, and finally being booted out because it turns out he was too horrible of a person for even ''Hell'' to handle. In a way it's like ''Music/TheDownwardSpiral'' but even bleaker.
90	* CrapsackWorld: A strong theme ''way'' beyond the point of despair.
91	* DarkerAndEdgier: The [[Music/UnknownPleasures first album]] was certainly dark, but often hid its gloomy themes behind catchy, punk inspired tunes and indirect narratives. ''Closer'' takes a positively listless approach by comparison, having far fewer {{hope spot}}s, slowing the pace and increasing the gloom present in the music by a considerable degree on its second side, resulting in what seems less like a conventional album and more like a raw cry of pain. Strangely, reviewers in 1980 nevertheless praised it as ''danceable''.
92	* DeliberatelyMonochrome: The album cover.
93	* DenOfIniquity: "Atrocity Exhibition", where human atrocities are exhibited for the amusement of others.
94	* DesignStudentsOrgasm: The album cover was designed by Peter Saville, and features an impressively put-together framed photograph that invokes the haunting thanatos of the album.
95	* DespairEventHorizon: The whole album qualifies as this, due to it essentially being a prolonged suicide note, but "Heart and Soul" takes the cake:
96	--> ''Existence, well what does it matter?''
97	* DesperatelyLookingForAPurposeInLife: "Twenty Four Hours":
98	--> ''Got to find my destiny before it gets too late''
99	* DrivenToSuicide: A huge theme, certainly in light of Curtis' eventual untimely end.
100	* DownerEnding: "Decades" (both for the album and the entire band thanks to its technical status as the last officially-released Joy Division song), which earns this on account of both its [[LaserGuidedKarma lyr]][[DespairEventHorizon ics]] and its music.
101	* EpicRocking: Several songs clock in at around 6 minutes. Considering how the album managed to get ten more minutes of length out of fewer songs than ''Music/UnknownPleasures'', there probably would have been more of these had Ian not crossed the DespairEventHorizon by this point.
102	* FakeOutFadeOut: "Isolation" ends with one.
103	* FreudWasRight: In "Isolation", Ian addresses a line to his mother.
104	* GodIsLoveSongs: "Colony":
105	--> ''God in his wisdom took you by the hand / God in his wisdom made you understand''
106	* GothRock: While not conventionally classified as this, its atmospheric dread and lyrical anguish and the influence they carry renders the album a cornerstone of the genre.
107	* GratuitousPanning: The tom-tom hits on "Passover" are panned between the left and right speakers.
108	* IdiosyncraticEpisodeNaming: Neither of the two sides are labeled on LP releases; the only indication as to which side is which are the etchings in the runout area, which contain the album's serial number plus "A" or "B" depending on the side.
109	* IWantMyMommy: "Isolation":
110	-->''Mother I've tried, please believe me\
111	I'm doing the best that I can\
112	I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through\
113	I'm ashamed of the person I am''
114	* JumpScare: The end of "Isolation", after reversing the tape, invokes this with a loud burst of noise.
115	* LastNoteNightmare: "Isolation" and "A Means to an End", which slowly comes to an end. "Isolation" is an interesting case in that it's just the last few seconds of the song being played backwards, the end result of Martin Hannet's hasty attempts at reversing a junior sound engineer's damaging of the song's master recording.
116	* LettingTheAirOutOfTheBand:
117	** "The Eternal".
118	** Done by tape manipulation on "A Means to an End".
119	* LongestSongGoesLast: "Decades"
120	* LonelyPianoPiece: "The Eternal" is dominated with downbeat piano playing and synthesized choir effects.
121	* LyricalDissonance: "Isolation", a bouncy synth-pop tune with gloomy lyrics:
122	--> ''Surrendered to self preservation,''
123	--> ''From others who care for themselves.''
124	--> ''A blindness that touches perfection,''
125	--> ''But hurts just like anything else.''
126	* MinimalisticCoverArt: A black and white photograph of the Appiani family tomb in the Cimitero Monumentale di Staglieno in Genoa, Italy, framed against a white backdrop. This, of course, lead to very unfortunate implications after Curtis' death.
127	* NewSoundAlbum: Quoth Website/{{Wikipedia}}, ''Closer'' "featured an even darker, doomed Curtis and a total abandonment of the punk aesthetic for a more unearthly, primeval sound." Compared to ''Unknown Pleasures'', the album is far more experimental in tone and makes greater use of synthesizers, to the point where Joy Division at this point seems like an almost completely different band than the one that made "Disorder" and "She's Lost Control".
128	* OneWordTitle: "Closer", as well as the individual tracks "Isolation", "Passover", "Colony" and "Decades".
129	* RecordProducer: Martin Hannett.
130	* SelfDeprecation: "Isolation":
131	--> ''Mother, I tried, please believe me''
132	--> ''I'm doing the best that I can''
133	--> ''I'm ashamed of the things I've been put through''
134	--> ''I'm ashamed of the person I am''
135	* ShoutOut:
136	** The album was inspired by Creator/JGBallard's ''The Atrocity Exhibition'' and the first track was named after this novel.
137	** "Colony" was inspired by Creator/FranzKafka's short story '"In the Penal Colony".
138	** "The Eternal" opens with synthesized train sounds and a slow, chugging bass riff, similar to the title track of Music/DavidBowie's ''Music/StationToStation''. Given that Ian Curtis was a huge fan of Bowie, this is likely intentional, as was the decision to feature a monochrome photograph against a white background for the album cover, similarly to ''Station to Station''.
139	** The album cover also acts as a nod to that of ''Music/{{Vienna}}'' by Music/{{Ultravox}}; the similarities are no coincidence, as both covers were designed by Peter Saville and the two albums were released just a week apart.
140	* StockSoundEffects: "The Eternal" has train sounds which were mixed in and heavily manipulated.
141	* {{Synthpop}}: "Isolation", "Heart and Soul", and "Decades" show the band experimenting with the genre that the surviving members would later perfect as Music/NewOrder.
142	* TitleOnlyChorus: "Isolation".
143	* TooSpicyForYogSogoth: "Decades" tells a narrative of the narrator and his friends descending into Hell (presumably continuing off of "The Eternal" and its story about a funeral procession), only to be kicked out because the atrocities they committed in their lifetime are too much even for Satan to handle.

Context Music / Closer