radical neon light movement (about ♥ cheap wine and sad pop songs/notes on modern life)

Joy Division - Closer, 1980 ---

I think one of the reasons, why this album is so amazingly beautiful, lays in how Closer starts and how it ends. How it takes me as a listener from one depressive state of mind to another depressive state of mind, without the music lose its strong intensity.

"Can I go on with this train of defense
Disturbing and purging my mind
I count up my duties -
when all's said and done
I know that I'll lose every time"

"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 lyrics in the first five songs contain a lot of frustration, and there are concrete references to lead singer Ian Curtis’ life. While the music is organized a little messy with mechanical sound effects, aggressive drum play, and scratchy guitars.

"Instants that can still betray us
A journey that leads to the sun
Soulless and bent on destruction"

From the sixth track, Heart and Soul, Closer takes a new direction. The sound is still very mechanical, and the lyrics are still depressive, but how the lyrics are depressing is different. It’s not as concrete as the first part – it’s more reflective, which serve to depict Curtis’ depression as a strangely beautiful thing for me as a listener.

After Heart and Soul the album is brought to an end by a famous trilogy of songs called Twenty Four Hours, The Eternal, and Decades - from which the sound also takes a new direction.

"I never realized the lengths’
I'd have to go
All the darkest corners of a sense
I didn't know"

"Procession moves on, the shouting is over
Praise to the glory of loved ones
now gone"

"Weary inside, now our hearts
lost forever
Can't replace the fear
or the thrill of the chase
These rituals showed up the door
for our wanderings
Opened and shut, then slammed
in our face
Where have they been"

The mechanical and aggressive sound is replaced with something very atmospheric. There are careful synth elements, light piano tones, and the soundscape is altogether incredible multifarious. It’s like these three tracks change Closer from being another almost perfect album to be the most perfect album ever made.

Tracklist:

1. Atrocity Exhibition
2. Isolation
3. Passover
4. Colony
5. A Means to an End
6. Heart and Soul
7. Twenty Four Hours
8. The Eternal
9. Decades