It's inevitable, I suppose, that bands and, particularly, albums that we take to heart will come to stand for something larger than themselves, and indeed, sometimes to assume almost mythic proportions; for me, Joy Division is perhaps the quintessential such band, and of their two proper albums, it's certainly Closer which most has that aura to it.
I got into Joy Division at probably the ideal time - late high school, edging into the beginning of university - and it seems that every year my relationship with the band deepens, even though there may very well have been stretches of 12 months or more during which I haven't sat down to listen to either Unknown Pleasures, Closer or any of the compilations (Permanent was my first) in their entirety. Much like Radiohead, and perhaps the Cure, too, they're always there in the background.
After all this time, Closer is still mesmerising; from the opening pair of the ominous guitar churn of "Atrocity Exhibition" and the skitteringly desolate (and weirdly catchy) "Isolation", it's unremittingly heavy and dark, but something about it feels like a memory of flying. Each of its only nine songs has its place on the record, which is by turns propulsive, jagged, pulsating, declining, and each one, those I've already mentioned, and "Passover", "Colony", "Means to an End", "Heart and Soul", "Twenty Four Hours", "The Eternal" and "Decades" carries a particular charge with it which is tied in with my sense of the whole of Closer but also separable. There are very few records as close to my heart as this one.
