Joy Division - "Closer" (40th Anniversary Reissue) | Album Review

There’s a repeated line in W.B. Yeats’ poem ‘Easter 1916’: A terrible beauty is born. This devastating line could describe the feeling of listening to Joy Division’s Closer for the first time. It’s a colossal work of art; a post-punk pillar; an ingenious sonic landscape; a blinding existential vision of songwriting. Closer was upon its release - and remains so now - one of the truly masterful records. It’s leading creator, though, wouldn’t live to see its birth. Ian Curtis committed suicide two months before the album was released and in the dark but enlightened aftermath, the lyrical ennui and deadening atmospherics of Closer became truer to life than anyone dared to imagine. A terrible beauty is born.