Rock history is jammed with messy, stupid, and tragic ends to promising starts-- plane crashes, overdoses, gunshots-- but Ian Curtis' death is still striking. Sometime early on the morning of May 18, 1980, Ian Curtis, at the age of 23, watched Werner Herzog's Stroszek, played Iggy Pop's The Idiot, and hung himself in the kitchen.
It's easy to say, in retrospect, that people should have seen it coming. His marriage was falling apart, his epilesy was worsening, and at their most uplifting, his band's lyrics set new benchmarks for melodrama, paranoia, and depression. "This is the way, step inside," intones Curtis at the start of the group's posthumous sophomore release Closer, an album title whose double meaning imparts almost as much menace as the fact that Curtis already sounds like he's singing from beyond the grave on the sepulchral lead track "Atrocity Exhibition".
On the other hand, Joy Division's popularity was on the rise. The group was about to embark on a U.S. tour with the Buzzcocks. A month after Curtis' death, "Love Will Tear Us Apart" would become the group's first hit. And unlike such dead-before-their-time predecessors as Nick Drake and Chris Bell, Ian Curtis was a bona fide star in the making whose impact was already being felt throughout the underground, and whose presence was being picked up on by such prescient mimics as Bono. ( "A Day Without Me", a single from U2's 1980 LP Boy, was allegedly inspired by Curtis' suicide.)
And then there's the music, a conflation of tribal primitivism and sophisticated art-rock that set the template for those twin poles of post-punk. A lot of credit goes to eccentric producer Martin Hannett, and it's the production-- not Curtis's well-parsed words or the band's suddenly ubiquitous biopic cachet-- that benefits most extensively from cleaned-up deluxe reissues of the band's two utterly essential albums, Unknown Pleasures and Closer. Simply put, the group's debut full-length Unknown Pleasures, released in 1979, sounds like little that came before it. At its most familiar, it vaguely approximates the cold claustrophobia of Iggy's The Idiot or David Bowie's Low, but from the first notes of "Disorder" on, the music is almost as alien as its iconic cover art.
It's one of the most perfect pairings of artist and producer in rock history, but that shouldn't undersell the band's input. Joy Division, like many of their Manchester peers, were inspired by the DIY anti-ethos of the Sex Pistols; they just didn't know what to do with it at first. So, shaped and prodded by notorious provocateur Hannett (who would turn the heat in the studio down low enough for everyone to see their breath), the group embraced space, ambience, and an imposing austerity. It's noteworthy how many songs on Unknown Pleasures fade in like something emerging from the shadows. It's also worth noting how heavy songs such as "Day of the Lords", "New Dawn Fades", "Shadowplay", and "Interzone" are, while sinewy anthem "Disorder" and the discordant anti-funk of "She's Lost Control" are glorious anomalies in both their precision and concision.
Closer is even more austere, more claustrophobic, more inventive, more beautiful, and more haunting than its predecessor. It's also Joy Division's start-to-finish masterpiece, a flawless encapsulation of everything the group sought to achieve. The hypnotically abrasive "Atrocity Exhibition" leads to the relentless yet somehow still economical "Isolation", the group more capable in its playing and confident in the arrangements. The dirge "Passover" implies that the band is every bit aware of its morbid power, while "Colony" marks a return to the heavy riffage of Unknown Pleasures.
Then, after such an auspicious start, Closer really clicks into gear. "Means to an End" is death disco before the fact, buoyed by a surprisingly rousing (and wordless) chorus. "Heart and Soul" is a remarkable collision of atmosphere and minimalism, the stuttering drum beat, synth and Peter Hook's melodic bass lead linked to one of Curtis' most subdued performances. "Heart and soul," he sings, as the stark instruments intertwine and twist together. "One will burn."
"Twenty Four Hours" briefly tries to pry free from the album's looming inevitability before "The Eternal" and "Decades" draw the music back down and the listener back in to Curtis' world. "The Eternal" is the bleakest thing the band ever recorded, and if "Decades" comes off a relative respite in comparison, the lyrics quickly quash that idea. "We knocked on the doors of Hell's darker chamber," moans Curtis. "Pushed to the limit, we dragged ourselves in."
The re-release of the collection Still is a little more frustrating, especially considering the singles collection Substance-- the only single disc on which you can find "Love Will Tear Us Apart", "Atmosphere", "Transmission", as well as several early tracks, some of Joy Division's most beautiful and brutal work-- is not included in this slate of reissues. (Perhaps the assumption is that older fans already have the awesomely comprehensive Heart and Soul box.) Still, originally released in 1981, a month before the surviving Joy Division members issued their first New Order album, Movement, is a ragged, enigmatic coda, an uneven odds-and-ends collection of lost tracks that fills in some gaps in Joy Division's history and legacy. Yet for a band that recorded so little, it's hard to quibble with the availability of more, especially when that means such songs as the actually uptempo "Ice Age", "The Kill", "Glass" (B-side to "Digital"), the metallic "The Sound of Music", and the immortal "Dead Souls".
The rest of Still is Joy Division live, for better and for worse-- captured mostly at the group's final appearance in Birmingham High Hall. Most notable is the presence of "Ceremony", eventually issued as New Order's first single. As tempting as it may be to project parallels with Joy Division's near-future incarnation as New Order, they're really not there, at least not beyond the most vague and nascent of stylistic precursors. As the band progresses, more synths make their way into the soundscape, and Peter Hook's bass creeps higher and higher, but there's otherwise little from Joy Division that ports over to New Order (though in a pinch, "Decades", which concludes Closer, could be the missing link between Power, Corruption and Lies and a track like "Elegia" from Low-Life).
In true "deluxe" fashion, each of these reissues is packaged with live disc that, while hardly pristine recordings, serve an important purpose. In fact, the furious sets documented-- 7/13/79, 2/8/80, 2/20/80-- prove that, free from the constraints but also the polish of the studio, Joy Division could be a decidedly aggressive beast. In these recordings, their chilly veneer melted away with visceral guitar slashing, Hook's no-nonsense bass, and Stephen Morris' spastic drums. The group also proves itself ruthlessly effective despite the conspicuous lack of proficiency. In the studio, Joy Division and Hannett could meticulously craft the album, note by note. Live and unleashed, they were undeniably powerful-- especially Curtis, whose Mancunian Jim Morrison croon fills each respective hall with foreboding-- but also pretty sloppy (it's no wonder the surviving members of the band later hitched themselves to drum machines and sequencers).
Yet the live sets are vital reminders that these purveyors of almost indomitable gloom were also human. Lest one forget, these were just young men caught up in the excitement of punk. They covered "Sister Ray" and "Louie Louie". They tried out then-new songs and trotted out staples for their growing legion of fans. They were making it up as they went along, and to an extent, still are. Only Curtis knows how the story really ends, and he's not talking.
