Жақындау: Joy Division соңғы альбомы

Closer is the second and final studio album by the English rock band Joy Division, released on 18 July 1980 by Factory Records. Produced by Martin Hannett, it was released two months after the suicide of the band's lead singer and lyricist Ian Curtis. The album reached No. 6 on the UK Albums Chart and peaked at No. 3 in New Zealand in September 1981. Closer was also named NME Album of the Year. It was remastered and re released in 2007. | width = 35em |salign=right

Regarding the album's lyrical content, Bernard Sumner recollected: "We'd go to rehearsals and sit around and talk about really banal things. We'd do that until we couldn't talk about banal things any more, then we'd pick up our instruments and record into a little cassette player. We didn't talk about the music or the lyrics very much. We never analysed it." Closer was recorded between 18 and 30 March 1980 at Britannia Row Studios in Islington, London. However, as with their debut album, both Hook and Sumner were unhappy with Hannett's work. Peter Hook later complained that the track "Atrocity Exhibition" was mixed on one of his days off, and when he heard the final product he was disappointed that the abrasiveness of his guitar part had been laden with effects and toned down. He wrote; "I was like, head in hands, oh fucking hell, it's happening again. Unknown Pleasures number two Martin [Hannett] had melted the guitar with his Marshall Time Waster. Made it sound like somebody strangling a cat, and to my mind, absolutely killed the song. I was so annoyed with him and went in and gave him a piece of my mind but he just turned around and told me to fuck off." The 1970 collection of "condensed novels" The Atrocity Exhibition by J. G. Ballard was an influence on the album, and shares its title with the opening track.

The album cover was designed by Martyn Atkins and Peter Saville, with a photograph of the Appiani family tomb in Genoa's Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno adorning much of the sleeve. The photograph was taken by Bernard Pierre Wolff in 1978. In a 2007 documentary on the band, designer Saville commented that he, upon learning of singer Ian Curtis's suicide, expressed immediate concern over the album's design as it depicted a funeral theme, remarking "we've got a tomb on the cover of the album!" At the time of release, Sounds critic Dave McCullough wrote that there were "dark strokes of gothic rock" on Closer. He described the album as "breathtaking rock music, a peak of current peaks, a sharing of something that's in [ ] others at this time, but at the same time defining those black notions and leaving them unmatched." Writing for Smash Hits, Alastair Macaulay described the album as an "exercise in dark controlled passion" and wrote that its music "stands up on its own as the band's epitaph". Writing for Melody Maker, Paolo Hewitt described the album as "probably some of the most irresistible dance music we'll hear this year [and] a far cry for sure from the almost suffocating claustrophobic world of the debut album," adding that "the best (and most subversive?) rock music has always dealt head on with emotions and thought rather than clichéd, standardised stances; that's what makes Closer and Joy Division so important." At the end of 1980, Closer was voted the 22nd best record of the year in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics published by The Village Voice. Robert Christgau, the poll's supervisor, deemed the album an improvement over Unknown Pleasures in a retrospective review: "Curtis's torment is less oppressive here because it's less dominant—the dark, roiling, off center rhythms have a life of their own. And if last time the dancier material had hooks, this time even the dirges have something closely resembling tunes." A book titled 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, published in 2005, Closer is defined as a "quantum leap" in terms of progression when compared to the band's debut album. According to Colin Larkin, Closer has since been "deservedly regarded by many critics as the most brilliant rock album of the 80s"; Larkin himself found the record flawless, writing in his Encyclopedia of Popular Music (2011) that it showed Joy Division at their creative peak and "maturity in every area" of their music. and receiving praise from artists such as George Michael. The album was voted number 1 in the 1980 Albums of the Year poll conducted by music magazine NME, and would be listed as number 157 in Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, maintaining the rank in the 2012 revision, and dropping to number 309 in the 2020 edition. By 1982 Closer had sold over 250,000 copies worldwide, with the posthumous single "Love Will Tear Us Apart" having also sold over 160,000 copies. In 1995 Closer was ranked one of the top 100 alternative albums ever to be released by Spin magazine (placing at number 69). In 2002, the American online magazine Pitchfork listed Closer as the 10th best album to be released in the 1980s. The album placed at number 72 on NME list of the 100 greatest British albums ever to be released. In addition, Q magazine placed Closer at number 8 in a list compiled of the 40 greatest albums to be released in the 1980s. In 2012, Slant Magazine listed the album at number 7 upon their compiled list of the best albums of the 1980s. In 2020, Rolling Stone included Closer in their "80 Greatest albums of 1980" list.

Note: the original vinyl disc only contained a small etching on the disk marking the A and B sides.