Content Warning: Depression, Illness, Self-Harm, Suicide
SIDE A
1. Atrocity Exhibition – 6:06
2. Isolation – 2:53
3. Passover – 4:46
4. Colony – 3:55
5. Means To An End – 4:07
SIDE B
6. Heart And Soul – 5:51
7. Twenty Four Hours – 4:26
8. Eternal – 6:07
9. Decades – 6:10
This is a tough album to talk about, because of the subject matter involved, both on the record but primarily in the narrative of Joy Division and Ian Curtis surrounding. Equally is difficult therefore is maintaining the right balance, because as tragic and contributing to the maudlin mythology of this masterpiece as the Ian Curtis story is, such mythologising is always over-wrought and doesn’t invariably do its artworks justice. This album deserves to be here on its merits. It is a remarkable balance of proto-gothic intensity and darkness, energetic rock ‘n’ roll, and artful patient sound sculptures. The whole image and reputation of Joy Division makes it easy to forget just what a flat out good enjoyable rock ‘n’ roll album this actually is for most of its duration, before a final pair of the most astonishingly pained but perfect epilogues put a sadly fitting bow on their entire career.
The Joy Division sound is remarkable and a mile from any other contemporary. They are an energetic four piece punk outfit in essence. Most of their releases reflect their embracing of and participating in the punk scene of the time. But on top of that raw basis there are subtle unique characteristics to each band member, whether its the understated baritone of Curtis, neither are exactly common around them at the time, or the melodic treble of Peter Hook’s bass work. They are not a band of extensively trained virtuosos. That was neither required nor welcome among their contemporaries at the time. But they are what I like in a few of the bands of that time era, particularly those dubbed post-punk, which is contrary and spunky and punky in attitude but with a higher level of artistry, creativity and competency.
The classic punk origins of Joy Division can be easily understood. The band members came out of the greater Manchester area, a working class city where punk was particularly burgeoning. Guitarist Bernard Sumner and bassist Peter Hook formed the band in 1976 in the most cliche of circumstances, after that most generic but sacred of punk rituals, attending a Sex Pistols concert. The attitude of music not being some sacred cow, but an easy accessible fun thing to do with friends, was at the ore of the building of the band. By the end of 1977, the iconically controversial name Joy Division (allegedly a reference to sexual slavery in Nazi concentration camp brothels of that name) was attached and the final four members together. Much of this early period is brilliantly if liberally chronicled in the wild 2002 Michael Winterbottom film 24 Hour Party People.
It is sadly hard to reconcile with the harrowing later images, but Curtis got the gig as frontman fundamentally because he seemed a chilled out guy who was easy to get along with. But ignorant to his messages though the rest of the band may have been, his haunting poetic lyrics and deep dark distant vocals brought a cutting edge and sense of darkness to Joy Division, and his captivating stage performances, gyrating between frozen nervous tension and bouts of wild movement, brought more press. Drummer Stephen Morris is one of those underrated adored players loved particularly by fellow drummers like me. What he did was simple and consistent and I can attest to its pure energy, discipline and difficulty of maintenance. He immediately doubled the energy of most Joy Division songs with sixteenth note filled backing, dominated by liberal helpings of hi-hat, that made every song pulse and rock but in a way that never once dropped off beat. He was the ultimate high-speed metronome. Hook’s sound was maybe the most sonically unique and easily identifiable element. He played his bass guitar like a lead, in tone, riffage and (whether he liked it or not), production. His bass parts are always trebly, busy, very high in the mix, and fantastic. Sumner, the de facto leader and straight man of the whole jigsaw, provided a perfect if undervalued counterpoint to three such unique other pieces, taking a lot of Hook’s would-be conventional rhythmic role. Sumner would also develop a simple but effective ear for melodic keyboard parts and increasingly fulfilled the dual role of keyboardist later in the band’s brief career.
Much of the responsibility for the patented Joy Division sound on record lays with producer Martin Hannett. For better or worse, he transformed a rough and raw live band into a studio outfit that always had a certain sparseness, ambience and restraint to it. His role is a controversial one among fans and the band itself. The band members, particularly Hook, regularly speak of Hannett having to some extent ruined what they were trying to go for. That viewpoint of the artist itself must be respected, and comparing their live energy to the darkness and density of their studio sound, you can definitely sympathise with the notion that some of the life has been sucked out of things. But certainly for me, as someone whose preferences are naturally towards deeper, more complex sounds and not naturally receptive to punk, I don’t think Joy Division would be even on my radar if not for the extra layer of artistry Hannett applied.
After short, sharp, punk nuggets to begin with, Joy Division’s output evolved through late 1978 to early 1980. Armed with such unique sounds and sensibilities and moulded by Hannett, the pioneered what would come to be seen as post-punk, with each subsequent release bringing more sonic diversity and trending away from basic punk directness towards a sparser, more minimal and often synthesizer drenched sound. Their 1979 debut album Unknown Pleasures was a triumphant melding of punk and a more dense, claustrophobic, gothic feeling. The brilliant accompanying single Transmission was the first in a run of increasingly astonishing non-album releases which showed an increasingly rapid transformation into patient, brooding, remarkable post punk-cum-new wave. She’s Lost Control, Atmosphere and Dead Souls are each more astonishingly different, sonically diverse and superb than the last. It was all leading excitably to the pinnacle that would be Closer, which itself is split largely evenly between more guitar-based songs written in 1979 and synthesizer led slow-burn gems written in early 1980.
Unfortunately this musical evolution was being matched along the journey by a tragically evolving narrative surrounding Curtis, a story well documented by the achingly gorgeous and difficult Anton Corbijn 2007 biopic Control. Always prone to bouts of depression, Curtis found himself increasingly overwhelmed by the pressures of a high speed gigging lifestyle. But beyond mere rock ‘n’ roll cliches, it ins underestimated just how match he was sadly just too physically ill to keep up. A 1979 diagnosis of epilepsy was accompanied by increasingly regular and severe seizures, clearly worsened by the perfect storm of worse possible influences in life at that time, between monumental stress in his personal and working life, as is the rock ‘n’ roll curse, and subsequent deteriorations of drinking and sleeping patterns. These seizures particularly occurred on stage as both the fatigue of performance and external elements like flashing lights could easily set him off. So self-conscious and so regular had they become, that the contrasting nature of the Curtis stage persona was further amplified, as he both retreated into his shell but also began to more aggressively mimic his seizures and blur the line between attacks and normality with his frenetic dancing.
By early 1980 all the personal and artistic elements of Curtis’ life had come to an overwhelming bittersweet head. He was satisfied with the masterpiece that was Closer and no doubt with the way he was able to harness his emotions into lyrics that the band, as they would later admit, continued not to read into enough. This small sense of artistic satisfaction was of course not enough to overcome everything else, but given how untenable life on the road was becoming and the sense of having achieved all he could, Curtis wanted out (of band and life it must be said). But looming on the horizon was a first major months long US tour. Meanwhile, among all that, the marriage between Ian and the fantastically supportive but understandably overwrought Deborah Curtis had broken down. Ian was now irritable, difficult to engage with, largely absent and had formed a profound loving connection (and likely affair) with Annik Honore.
Other sources, on paper and film, have gone into infamous detail about the final days of Ian Curtis. It is neither necessary to rehash, not am I wanting to be inclined towards glorifying such tragedy in the name of mythology. The devastating reality is that by the time of Joy Division’s would be departure for the new world in May 1980, Curtis had taken his own life.
So it came to pass that a whole two months after this tragedy and the existence of an entity known as Joy Division, Closer was released and came to be adored, but all under that cloud. Alongside it, posthumously, came the legendary single Love Will Tear Us Apart. It left Joy Division with a belated hit single, a defining famous anthem that exists literally only after the band do. It’s hardly representative of the band or in particular album’s general sound and its existence is a permanent sombre memorial, but a welcome and almost fun one. Its the ultimate memorial up in lights in that it ensures the band remain known of, with a recognisable and universally popular entry point for all.
Atrocity Exhibition is the opening track and maybe the most difficult to penetrate. Although it is one of the guitar driven earlier tracks, rather than a short direct rockout, it comes from the template of much of Unknown Pleasures and the intermediate singles between the albums, in that it is a slow, minimal and disquieting dirge, arguably before the addition of more keyboard parts brought a new life to these kind of arrangements. It is a remarkable track though, albeit maybe a bit too zoned out. As Hook at one point laments, on this opener Hannett applies all kinds of dulling deadening and delaying effects to space out the sound here in particular, much as he did on the previous albums but for the most part is more nuanced and balanced with this time around. The way Sumner’s first guitar part chugs in like some heavy construction tool is super cool, and immediately establishes a sense that this is going to be dense listening. The reality though is that despite the mythology and darkness of the lyrics, the album is not nearly as mercilessly dense as its predecessor, as immediately demonstrated by the next track Isolation. It is one of the most fantastic off-kilter little synth-pop gems ever. Morris and Hook start with their typical style, but particular upbeat and electronic, before Sumner plays maybe his most energetic and busy Joy Division keyboard part ever, alternating between a fantastic lead riff and long padding chords, all of them with fun little effects and delays applied. A crazy little false ending is the last quirky move in a song just too weird to be an effective hit single but which definitely functions in that role in the flow of the album.
The final three tracks on the first half of the record make up a sequence which is the least dynamic and masterful section but still maintains a satisfying flow. Passover is another track whose upbeat simplicity is often forgotten or underrated. It is a simple track, with quite a lot of sparse sections of just Curtis over the perpetual solid Morris beat. Sumner as ever is brilliant in his dynamics and moments of emphasis rather than staying unnecessarily busy. More than anything, the otherwise last interesting track on the album shows the improved and more up front direct production style on a composition of this type compared to the previous album. Colony is the best of the trio, with a filthy staccato power dirge from Sumner to begin, and Morris on fire with a quintessential simple but monstrous roving tom and snare pattern that dominated the whole track. Curtis brings more energy than usual and though the track doesn’t really go anywhere, it is typical Joy Division in that establishes what its doing and then riffs off that in disciplined and in this case, energetic, fashion. A Means To An End continues the pattern in earnest, with a simple octave pattern from Hook anchoring another basic and really rather pleasant rock ‘n’ roll jam in which Sumner gets to have some solo fun.
Side B is when things really start to reach the permanently remarkable, and the final three tracks in particular indisputably cement the reputation of the overall work. Heart and Soul comes first and once again doesn’t venture far from its core concept, though that is itself new and interesting. One of the last written Joy Division songs, it starts with a futuristic sounded synthesized pattern over which Morris (and Hannett) bring back more of that processed electronic sound that so works for such a human drum machine. At times it feels as close to the genuine dance music that would categorise the New Order future as anything else the ever did. Album highlight Twenty Four Hours comes next and is certainly the standout of the guitar-based tracks, and if not for the masterpiece to come, would be the clear best of the whole bunch. It may be the most triumphantly delirious rocker of their whole career and for me nothing else best summarises the unique excellence of Hook. His subtle off beat opening riff is the track’s main melodic hook, syncopating in and out of concert with the minimal and tom-heavy Morris. But Morris and Sumner regularly fire breakneck into the most uplifting of jams possible for such a dense act, with Hook’s trebly reverb-laden lead always cutting through. It is pretty much the peak of the Joy Division rock sound. Morris is an absolute marvel, filling everywhere but with such dynamism and directness to make it almost feel like a pop song while Curtis is lapsing in and out of fury and melancholy.
If the album was already a gothic but perversely fun collection post-punk, the one-two punch at the end transforms everything. Six minutes each, both slow and pained and both based around simple harrowing keyboard figures, they are both achingly beautiful. Eternal is the curtain-raiser, starting and ending with blowing wind which slowly sweep in Sumner’s ghostly piano figure. It feels amazingly contemporary, free as it completely of any dated punk or even new-save synth sounds. This track is the template for what would become every interesting 21st century band’s token end of album slow sad artsy song. It is minimal, ambient, sleepy and tender. The percussion is echoing off in the distance, unlike Curtis for once, and Hook supplements Sumner’s piano with a single low repeating bassline. But nothing comes close to Decades. It towers above this album, the whole Joy Division oeuvre and the vast majority of anything I have ever heard. It is tough for me to talk about, both for its melancholy but just as much its sheer excellence. Few tracks leave me as lost for words as this most sadly perfect loser to any album or any career. After its hypnotic start featuring a metallic cymbal and the entry of Hook, Sumner presents a simple and sad but amazing sequence of synth chords as the basis of the song. Over this comes the most dynamic, forward and defining performance of Curtis’ life and the perfect shifting building arrangement. Regularly the band stops and leaves Sumner solo on, of all things to get under my skin, the mellotron. The re-entries from these achingly sad mellotron sequences are perfect, with the synth tone and riffs and Curtis maintaining the melancholy but the energy of the band subtly shifting up just enough to somehow make the whole thing feel uplifting. The song and album ends with Morris leading the ensemble in a simple but pulsing coda over which Sumner’s mellotron gets the sweetest final say.
Somewhere along the barely three year Joy Division journey, the four agreed to retire the name should any of them move on, for whatever reason. They certainly would not have foreseen the circumstances coming to pass in such immediate and harrowing fashion, but Sumner, Hook and Morris were good on their word and went on to bigger and better things as the 80s pop icons New Order.
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