Atrocity Exhibition

This is the song that got me into Joy Division. I had owned Unknown Pleasures for about five years, and never got into it, couldn't understand what the fuss was about. But then, hearing Closer for the first time, expecting to not like it and expecting it to be similar to UP... and then being assaulted by THIS as the opening song - wow! Like much of the album, it really surprised me, because rather than the gloom I was expecting, there is just this incredible energy and purpose that to my ears, just wasn't there on Unknown Pleasures. The drumming, the screeching guitar, the utterly CONFIDENT vocals that grab - no, BITE - the song by the neck. And the lyrics - poetic disgust, the evil banality of the modern world expressed in a way that is both beautiful and utterly chilling. But there is an irony to the words which stops them being just a miserable commentary - we are all complicit in this obscene circus, the singer included, so much so that he can act as tour guide while still being horrified by the whole thing.

Having said all this, there's no way of knowing what Ian Curtis really meant in this song, but it's incredibly tempting to transpose it onto the here and now, and the way that we are all morbidly fascinated by reality shows, despite (or because of) knowing that they often ruin the lives of those taking part. Regardelss, there is so much furious certainty in the lyrics and Ian Curtis's delivery of them, a certainty that just wasn't there in the first album, and it's matched perfectly by the insistent and savage musical accompaniment, an energy which continues through Isolation, Colony and A Means to an End. Whether you take this song (and album) in the context of Ian Curtis's death or not, it is propelled by a glorious rage and conviction that exhilarates far more than it saddens.