‘Unknown Pleasures’ vs ‘Closer’: Which Joy Division album is the best?
There is a common misconception that Joy Division are a gloomy band. People put on their music in a bid to feel sad and only associate their music with sadness, but there is much more to it than that. Pop music has always been about distant emotion. The lyrics in other pop songs are generic and easily identifiable by people who can assign meaning without trying hard. Joy Division went a lot further than that, diving headfirst into the realm of emotion and reality in a bid to give a version of pop music that was utterly untouchable and gave rise to post-punk.
Their work is equal parts light and dark, existing outside of the time itself, its own physical entity. There were no bands in any way comparable to Joy Division before them, and there have been no bands like them since. Of course, that kind of music didn’t come without its pitfalls, as the band’s oral historian, Jon Savage, recalls when he spoke to Factory Records Alan Erasmus about the mental state of the band, the label executive simply responded, “There’s trouble”.
The lyrics and the band’s tone had a lot to do with Ian Curtis. He struggled throughout his life, considering he was only 22 when the band’s debut, Unknown Pleasures, came out; the struggle present on a lot of the tracks on that album is as present as ever. He suffered from severe epilepsy and depression, which led to him taking his own life in 1980.
While Curtis’s mental state certainly plays into the music and gives it a great deal of authenticity, it has also led to a slight mythology surrounding the band, meaning a lot of the time, what makes the music great is set aside, and instead listeners become obsessed with the idea of the “Tortured poet”. John Peel once spoke about this, saying, “Obviously, the death of Ian Curtis sort of mythologised [Joy Division] to a degree to which I think the surviving members of the band must have found very difficult to cope with.”
He continued: “A very melancholy thing to have to live with. I still get demo tapes from America and from Europe by bands which are quite clearly influenced by nothing as much as they’re influenced on Joy Division. You get a bit fed up with it, really.”
It’s always worth taking a step away from the story of Joy Division just to simply enjoy the music that they made. They revolutionised what pop could be and gave way to the post-punk movement. There is no escaping the power contained within the equally subdued and large sound they created on their two albums, Unknown Pleasures and Closer. It begs the question, which of their albums is best?
There is no definitive answer, of course, as it’s all very subjective, and different records appeal to different people. Unknown Pleasures is certainly the most iconic album, as the cover can be seen on T-shirts and posters around the world. That being said, many people believe Closer is the better album musically.
The band’s first album, Unknown Pleasures, is a conscious leap into the dark. It’s a sonic twist on what people had known previously, and Curtis’s lyricism and vocals are totally on point. The emotion in his voice as he sings, “Feeling, feeling, feeling!” on ‘Disorder’ gave people a level of heartfelt beauty that was previously alien in the world of music. The album shot the band into the artistic stratosphere.
One year later, Ian Curtis took his own life, and Closer came out two months later. It was a challenging listen for many people, as a lot of Curtis’s lyrics almost foreshadow what would come. People have dissected his lyrics to find the meaning in them and better understand his mental state, and while this is sad, the album holds up as a triumph of musical excellence.
Moby once spoke about Closer, saying, “From the cover art to the Sylvia Plath-esque lyrics to the detuned pianos on side two, Closer is a perfect album. In 1981, my friend Dave bought it and let me tape it. I remember hearing ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ (which we all thought was called ‘Astro-city exhibition’), and even before it was finished, I’d fallen in love with Joy Division.”
Both albums are classics. Musically, there seems to be a broad consensus that Closer is the better album, but the good thing about Joy Division is how individualistic they are. Different songs and albums move people in different ways. Their music remains timeless and should be recognised even without the story that surrounds the band.
