Joy Divison - Closer (40th Anniversary) [2020 Digital Master] (1980/2020)

When Closer was released on July 18th, 1980 Ian Curtis had already been six feet under for two months. At just 23 years old, the singer of Joy Division – who committed suicide – would never get a share of the laurels that this second and last studio album was about to receive for the years and decades to come… In such grim circumstances, this opus was of course bound to become a sort of testament. With Closer, rock music (that in this case doesn’t roll so much) got the most beautiful soundtrack to its angst. As always with Joy Division, the groove is viscerally martial, guitars are excessively shrill, the vocals are wrapped up in a straightjacket, rhythmic patterns smell sweetly of cataclysm, while the lyrics evoke claustrophobia: no doubt about it, post punk now has its Tables of Law. A rulebook and lifestyle directly inherited from early Velvet Underground, Bowie in his Berlin days, the Doors and German Krautrock. With Closer, Ian Curtis still remains here among us.