Joy Division, in spite of its short and tragic lifespan, remains one of the ‘80s most iconic bands. The stark cover art of Unknown Pleasures has been emblazoned on innumerable T-shirts and posters. Legions of guttural-voiced imitators morphed into a genre of their own, emulating Joy Division’s post-punk sensibility while bedazzling their legacy of milquetoast outfits. The pop-adjacent single “Love Will Tear Us Apart” still plays endlessly on every New Wave radio station. The band’s second and final album, Closer, however, is one of their lesser-known works, perhaps because of its morbid backstory — it is a suicide note in nine parts.
Closer begins with “Atrocity Exhibition”, perhaps the harshest track on the album. The listener receives no gentle descent into the desolate subject matter or harsh, industrial instrumentals. The first few seconds inundate listeners with a flood of strange sounds, leaving them to flounder in the deep end. With lyrics such as “Asylums with doors open wide/ Where people had paid to see inside/ For entertainment they watch his body twist/ Behind his eyes he says, ‘I still exist,’” “Atrocity Exhibition” conjures up the image of a freakshow-meets-insane- asylum where doctors cruelly parade patients before a paying audience. “This is the way, step inside,” Curtis repeats in a hypnotic drone — he is inviting you to insert yourself in this scene, to ogle these sufferers alongside the song’s subjects. Indeed, the lyrics have a double meaning. They function both within the scene Curtis creates and as a metacommentary of Joy Division’s audience in general. When you listen to Closer, you listen to the immortalized downward spiral of a human being. Curtis himself is the man imploring, “I still exist,” and you are the spectators who witness and consume his pain. These lyrics, some of Ian Curtis’ most evocative, offer a scathing critique on the commodification of human suffering and the damaging impact of exploitative media. It also grants listeners a window into Curtis’ own misery — he had recently been diagnosed with epilepsy, and the combination of explosive fits and brain-altering medication exacerbated the depression which had already cast his life into gloom. Ian Curtis spent every free moment wallowing in human suffering, and he channels this grotesque fixation into the lyrics of “Atrocity Exhibition.” The result is abrasive at first, with the same industrial screeching and heavy, frantic drums that form late-century Manchester’s urban soundscape, but over time the song acquires a twisted beauty, leaving a lingering imprint in the listener’s memory.
“Isolation,” the album’s second track, serves as a paranoia-steeped testament to Curtis’ mental torment — while “Atrocity Exhibition” conveys his reasons for committing suicide, “Isolation” documents his attempts to avoid such a drastic measure. The uplifting synth instrumentals (foreshadowing the band’s later iteration as New Order) starkly contrast with the mournful vocals, suggesting an optimistic mask that conceals desperation beneath. The title is fitting — Ian Curtis recorded most of the album’s vocals in self-imposed isolation, layering them over top of the band’s prerecorded instrumentals. In a heartrending plea, Curtis insists, “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.” The confessional quality renders the lines painfully personal, as though you are reading Ian Curtis’ diary. Yet again, we as listeners unwittingly intrude upon an intimate interior life. This deep-rooted feeling of inadequacy and self-loathing permeates all of Curtis’ lyrics — it constitutes part of what drove him to suicide, and in retrospect, “Isolation” reads like a painfully obvious string of last words. “Surrender to self-preservation,” Curtis commands, and this song indeed proves that he has tried — suicide is not a whim, but his last resort.
“Colony,” which draws its name from the eponymous story by Franz Kafka, earns the disputable title of Closer’s gothiest song. With its repetitive bass line, low synth and steam-engine chugging, it’s easy to see why fans describe Joy Division as the ambient noise of the city. While it may seem like a random source for inspiration, Kafka’s work mainly grapples with bureaucracy and dehumanization, so it feels natural that his stories would resonate with someone raised in the desolate concrete jungle of Manchester. Additionally, Kafka’s tale “In The Penal Colony” chronicles the brutal torture and execution of a unnamed inmate, an alluring tale for someone with Curtis’ macabre obsession. “Colony” lives up to expectations, perpetuating the theme of physical agony that Curtis establishes with “Atrocity Exhibition.” With the lines “no family life, this makes me feel uneasy/ stood here alone in this colony,” Curtis paints a picture of himself as a forsaken outcast, already estranged from everyone in his life. It is darkly ironic, then, that a song called “Colony” — a word which evokes stoic codependence and unity — actually represents a profound loneliness. In simpler terms, “Colony” depicts standing alone in a crowd.
The penultimate track on the album, “The Eternal” radiates a sort of gauzy sadness. The lagging drumbeat and echoing piano instrumentals, conspicuously softer than the rest of the album, imbue the song with a melancholy exhaustion. Ian Curtis wrote “The Eternal” about a boy from his neighborhood, whose Down syndrome isolated him from other children. In spite of their biographical nature, the lyrics closely parallel Ian Curtis’ own experience. In the 2007 documentary, bandmate Bernard Sumner recounts one occasion where Curtis, still recovering from an epileptic fit, watched the rest of the band play on without him. Curtis began to imagine his loved ones moving on without him, and the first verse, in which a disembodied narrator recounts his own funeral procession, eerily mimics this backstage realization. The third verse states that he will “cry like a child though these years make me older/ with children my time is so wastefully spent.” While this sentiment directly applies to his neighbor with Down syndrome, who was trapped in an infantile situation while his playmates matured and abandoned him, it also pertains to Ian Curtis’ own premature death. Curtis committed suicide before he achieved widespread fame. His image remains eternally preserved in a neverending youth, forever young even as his bandmates and family grow old.
