Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Closer by Joy Division (1980, Factory)



Joy Division is the single entity responsible for the existence of this blog. About a couple of years ago, I was having a beer with Shawn Chirrey at Thirsty And Miserable in Toronto's Kensington Market and we were discussing how I thought I was the only person who didn't understand the allure of Joy Division. The bartender must have been eavesdropping on our conversation, because seconds later Shawn tells me that the music that she had put on the bar stereo was Joy Division. I shrugged my shoulders. I might have even yawned. Sometime later, I found myself in a very animated discussion – while ice skating with Trisha Levoie – regarding my indifference towards the band. Trish immediately thought I was crazy and told me to give the band a shot. That's when I figured I ought to start listening to records that I had never listen to at all. Surely, all these people who have decent tastes in music can't be entirely wrong. Hence this project. As My Album Project returns from a lengthy hiatus, I thought it fitting to spend some time with Joy Division's Closer.

WHY I NEVER GOT AROUND TO LISTENING TO THIS ARTIST/ALBUM
  • In 1986, I was in ninth grade and started hearing different kinds of music from the "freak" kids I found myself gravitating towards – those students who didn't really belong to any particular social clique, while never really being alienated by any specific group either – and one of the bands I often heard and liked was New Order. Being a rock and roll kid, New Order's electronic dance styles were completely opposite to anything I was into up until then. As far as I knew, New Order were a band of synths, sequencers and drum machines.
  • Sometime around 1988, my parents' friends the Pabalan family from Cleveland, Ohio came up to Toronto a few times to visit. Tim was the eldest (and only boy) of the three Pabalan kids, and was around the same the age as my twin brother Andrew and me, so we pretty much spent the time hanging out. We smoked cigarettes, bought obscene t-shirts and traded mixed tapes. I remember giving Tim a tape with The Cult's Electric album on one side and Redd Kross' Neurotica on the other. In exchange, Tim gave us a mixed tape with a few tracks from a bunch of bands some we didn't know such as The Lemonheads, The Mighty Lemon Drops, and The Pixies (!). The tape also contained a few songs by New Order. But when I put the tape on to listen to New Order's “The Love Vigilante”, I was expecting to hear dance beats, but instead, heard traditional rock instrumentation (including harmonica). And the shit was good. Around this time, I did a bit of research and found out that the members of New Order were previously in a band called Joy Division, with a singer who killed himself. I was very interested to hear what New Order with live instruments sounded like.
  • Like pretty much everyone else who weren't Joy Division fans, the first song I heard from them was their 1980 single “Love Will Tear Us Apart”. Upon first hearing it, I thought it had a catchy chorus, but Ian Curtis' voice made me want to stick my head in an oven. This and this alone immediately turned me off Joy Division and I have yet to recover.

WHAT I KNEW ABOUT THE ALBUM BEFORE THIS PROJECT
  • According to my personal music resource Dwayne Slack, much of the band's music that many Joy Division fans like is, in fact, not from Closer – or even from the band's debut release Unknown Pleasures – but from other sources such as single releases (i.e the aforementioned “Love Will Tear us Apart”), compilations, and re-mix records, such as Still (1981), The Peel Sessions EPs (1986-87) and Substance (1988). So bottom line: If Dwayne is correct and Joy Division fans didn't know too much about this album, then certainly I didn't know shit-all about this record before this project. 

AFTER A WEEK OF DIGESTING THIS ALBUM

  • I rather enjoyed the instrumentation on Closer. Stephen Morris' jack-hammer drumming style along with Peter Hook's driving bass and Bernard Sumner's airy, yet chunky guitar is prototypically post-punk: repetitive funk rhythms, pizzicato attack on the guitars, and vocals awash in reverb. But speaking of the vocals, as I feared, it was very difficult to get rid of my preconceived notions regarding Ian Curtis' vocal performance. As much as I wanted to rid any biases I had against his voice, I just feel dynamic tracks like “Atrocity Exhibition”, “Passover”, “Colony"(my personal favourite on the record!), and “Twenty Four Hours” would have been better served with another vocal style. Of course that would not make them Joy Division songs, but that's how I feel. However, I thought Curtis' voice quite appropriate for the brooding “Heart and Soul” and “The Eternal.”
  • I make light of the fact that Ian Curtis' vocal style depresses me and makes me want to do harm to myself, but mental illness and depression are nothing to jest about. Curtis was a troubled young man and this was reflected in his art. And many people found solace in his work. I appreciate that. But it still not enough for me to want to listen to his voice on a regular basis.


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