Closer

Inevitably iconoclastic obituaries terminated? Good. Autopsies – will have to be personal – your own moments in the sanatorium of Joy Division music, encouraged by sharp note sounds. A sweating repentant pleading the guilt of nations, red velvet, naked floor boards: 'God in his wisdom, take you by the hand, God in his wisdom make you understand'. Bitter solace.

Closer confronts the eternal problems of relationships from the attitude of men, angry, ill and ugly as son, metaphorically illuminating provider and provided for, controller and controlled, conservatism versus discretion, law and equity, emotion faced by repression, religion fighting sexuality. A life devoid of hope forces prostitution; explanations of such behaviour are never forthcoming in presbyteries. These are times to hum while we wait for Godot.

Joy Division presentation is an antidote to bland entertainment. Their howlings describe love and hate in slavic terms of an innocent torn by pointless relationships he neither created nor desired but which ultimately decide his aspirations and eventualities – yet both music and lyrics remain multi-layered, springboard suggestion from a band who never suffocate, replacing dogmatism with pregnant possibility which only you can ultimately fill. Joy Division sit firmly on the wrong side of rock 'n' roll tracks, proud in their detachment and oblivious to the torts others consider they create.

Description of this record with ugly words such as 'motif', 'keyboard embellishment', 'guitar solo' etc., would only detract from its individuality and magnificence. Joy Division both produce and are concerned. Closer is not a slab of teen transient fodder from a commercial block of bullshit philosophy advocating farcical 'love', but a pious document of mental pain from inside the complications that inevitably lead to detachment, patricide, genocide and hatred. Someone does it, you know. Someone.

This long player needs risks; once taken, they pay off all concerned by manoeuvring at a tangent from conventional rocky processes which insist on the listener adopting a vicarious role (do you really want to hear about peoples difficulty with their record companies, twice?) Discussion can be had on the subjects, the irredeemable truths of depression, love, fear and striving to exist, simply, decently. Joy Division's mode is that of a screaming repentant eager for comprehension and forgiveness but unable to find solace.

Music of this division demands indulgence. It goes beyond symbolism and formalism. To create such, an inquisitorial mind must ensure that instruments retain their individuality and purpose sufficient to merit inclusion in their own right in these spartan dirges. Basses are hard and evocative, ignorant of technique that sits, blinkering, unquestioned. Drums function detached, footprints and heartbeats quiet or excited. Guitars wait for their moment to smear noise. Synthesisers jump and complement with simplicity that is redemptive to their ilk. Baby blue-eyed voice almost stuns with its clarity, pure beyond absolution, a confessor's dry throat spilling poetry – not the phlegm we're used to.

Such beauty and vitality is so rare, a gentle violence in music with time and space, of souls imploring. It is beyond consideration of fiscal returns or 'making it'. Devoid of advertisement, contempt, or commercialism, simply urgent to render communication that we all need so urgently to face the crises that are so, oh so, inevitable.

The role of research is so limited that the least we should demand is the honesty and compassion we expect of ourselves, a broad perception which ignores personal affiliations or prejudices and a passion that can ultimately move. Joy Division won't change the world, in all reality won't change anything, nevertheless their inculcation in leisure time is endlessly pleasurable despite it's forlorness and manages to be relevant despite vagueness.

Inevitably we all have to spend a period out on the wire: choices made then can have no relation to Ford Corinas, Kenwood Chefs, colour TVs or RTE radio 2. There it matters little who you are or what you've done and with whom. Despair is not fashionable; laughter is the greatest emotion.

The sold difficulty with Closer is the legality of its monopoly on a certain stereo Counsel will not be instructed.

"Looking up I saw myself as a creature derided by vanity…" – James Joyce , 'Araby'.