18th July - Joy Division's Closer

Artist – Album: Joy Division - Closer

Released: 18^th July 1980

Sounds Like: Tales from the crypt

If Joy Division’s debut Unknown Pleasures is a masterpiece (and it is), then their follow up Closer is... um... an even better masterpiece.

Judged solely on the basis of its songs it’s pretty good. Opener ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ is a typically harrowing welcome, with its tribal drums and Ian Curtis’ unhinged chant of “This is the way, step in inside”. Thereafter, the band guides you down the grey stoney staircase in to a cavernous crypt of despair. ‘Isolation’ is punchy and frightening, ‘A Means to an End’ is indie disco two decades ahead of its time (that coruscating backing has been unapologetically ripped off countless times by the likes of The Gossip, Justice and Bloc Party), ‘Heart and Soul’ is solemn and mumbled, whilst ‘Twenty Four Hours’ strives to escape the gloom in vain. ‘The Eternal’ may well be the bleakest six minutes ever laid down.

Given the circumstances that gave birth to it however, the album is something extra special. On 17 May 1980, the iconic Curtis, who suffered from acute depression, committed suicide. Two months later this record, with its black and white tomb cover and desperate lyrics, was released...

Aannnnddddd that’s number 200! Score!

Albumaday... rating:  9/10

1.       Atrocity Exhibition – 6:06

2.       Isolation – 2:53

3.       Passover – 4:46

4.       Colony – 3:55

5.       A Means to an End – 4:07

6.       Heart and Soul – 5:51

7.       Twenty Four Hours – 4:26

8.       The Eternal – 6:07

9.       Decades – 6:10

Listen to ‘Twenty Four Hours ’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiCc_mFXD3E

Also released on the 18^th July:

1966: The Byrds – Fifth Dimension

14th June - Joy Division's Unknown Pleasures

Artist – Album: Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures

Released:  14^th June 1979            

Sounds Like: That anti-Friday feeling

Well, it’s been a long (looong) slog of a week, but it’s finally the weekend. A bit of a special weekend at that, for I, Joseph Francis Douglas, celebrate my 25^th anniversary of birth on Sunday. It’s also Father’s Day on the 16^th so I get to spend some time in the pub with my Dad, and tomorrow some sort of loose gathering will occur. Tonight I’m getting treated to a meal and drinks on the Manchester’s world famous curry mile. It’s almost too much for my limited vocabulary to express, and so I’ll leave it to the loquacious Rebecca Black to describe exactly how it goes:

“Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday
Today i-is Friday, Friday (Partyin’)
We-we-we so excited
We so excited
We gonna have a ball today
Tomorrow is Saturday
And Sunday comes after...wards
I don’t want this weekend to end”

If Miss Black is at one end of the respective spectrums of excitement, talent and cool, Joy Division are way off on the distant opposite pole. Not for them partyin’ partyin’; instead they serve up for today one of the most melancholic and despairing albums of all time. The robotic percussion and hypnotic bass is one thing, the sparseness of the production and the ominous atmosphere another, but it’s Ian Curtis’ low moan and desperate, simple lyrics that takes the group to another level of bleakness.

Now I know none of you are thinking that you’d rather listen to “Friday” right now, but I feel I may have to reassure you that it's good. Yes, it can be hard work, but with songs like the post-punk disco of ‘Disorder’ and ‘She’s Lost Control’ or the brittle and brooding ‘Shadowplay’ on display, the album remains captivating and awesome. It’s well worth giving a listen. Just maybe not on a Friday.

Albumaday... rating: 9/10

1.       Disorder – 3:32

2.       Day of the Lords – 4:49

3.       Candidate – 3:05

4.       Insight – 4:29

5.       New Dawn Fades – 4:47

6.       She’s Lost Control – 3:57

7.       Shadowplay – 3:55

8.       Wilderness – 2:38

9.       Interzone – 2:16

10.   I Remember Nothing – 5:53

Listen to ‘Disorder’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PldpBJEn4vQ