There are some flaws in this, and there are is some very familiar ground re-treaded. But I also think it’s makes some important points about UP and Closer:
In 1979, for even the most avid NME reader living outside Britain’s big cities, it wasn’t easy to get to see new bands. Sure, you could hear them on John Peel, but that didn’t tell you anything about their stage demeanours. It follows that many of those who watched Joy Division perform...
thequietus.com
I listened to JD retrospectively, having got into NO in my youth and attending loads of their gigs.
I’ve come to think of the two albums as making sense of the external/internal crises of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. UP makes sense to me as a soundscape to the collapse of working class towns and cities as the post war corporatist approach was abandoned, unemployment rocketed and abandonment and ruin were everywhere. It sounded like where you lived
looked. I used to listen to it on the bus travelling through the broken places of the West Midlands. It was like a soundtrack
Closer dealt with the resulting individual crises. I’ve always thought Mark Fisher captured JD better than anyone else (from my perspective). He said something like ‘If the truth of Joy Division is that they are just lads, then the truth of laddism is Joy Division’ - depression, disorientation, sadness and loss of hope.
I went to a lot of NO gigs when I was in my late teens and early 20’s and their gigs were always a mix of the usual indie types but they also had a significant football casual following.
Its a pity Mark Fisher didn’t write even more extensively about them. Because their hauntalogical music and lyrics spoke to, and reflected, the particular lived experience of working class youth in the towns and cities.
In the deserved nostalgia and legacy accounts of the band this is often overlooked/forgotten
