NME albums list

Joy Division : Heart And Soul

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Joy Division's Closer tops the 1980 NME album list, edging out Elvis Costello's R+B tribute Get Happy!!, The Beat's debut I Just Can't Stop It and Black Uhuru's Sinsemilla. Over the years, critics have changed their minds about quite a few of the albums on this list: PIL's Printemps Au Paris, Lou Reed's Growing Up In Public, Iggy Pop's Soldier and Aerosmith's Night In The Ruts don't hold up with the best of what these artists have achieved. The same goes for Ry Cooder's Borderline and Ian Dury's Laughter. And some of those also-rans deserve to be higher up in the chart. That said, this list will be closer to my Top 40 which I will reveal next week. 

1980 NME Albums 

1. Closer - Joy Division 

2. Get Happy - Elvis Costello 

3. I Just Can't Stop It - The Beat 

4. Sinsemilla - Black Uhuru 

5. Movies - Holger Czukay 

6. Remain In Light - Talking Heads 

7. Crocodiles - Echo And The Bunnymen 

8. Borderline - Ry Cooder 

9. Scary Monsters - David Bowie 

10. Searching For The Young Soul Rebels - Dexys Midnight Runners 

11. Sound Affects - The Jam 

12. The River - Bruce Springsteen 

13. Signing Off - Ub40 

14. The Correct Use Of Soap - Magazine 

15. Songs The Lord Taught Us - The Cramps 

16. Laughter - Ian Dury & The Blockheads 

17. Night Passage - Weather Report 

18. Grace And Danger - John Martyn 

19. Empires And Dance - Simple Minds 

20. Suicide - Suicide 

21. Uprising - Bob Marley & The Wailers 

22. Warm Thoughts - Smokey Robinson 

23. Colossal Youth - Young Marble Giants 

24. Printemps Au Paris - Public Image Ltd. 

25. Voice Of America - Cabaret Voltaire 

26. Warm Leatherette - Grace Jones 

27. Die Kleinen Und Die Bosen - D.A.F. 

28. Soldier - Iggy Pop 

29. Toots Live - Toots And The Maytals 

30. Growing Up In Public - Lou Reed 

31. Doc At The Radar Station - Captain Beefheart 

32. More Specials - The Specials 

33. Cultosaurus Erectus - Blue Oyster Cult 

34. Kilimanjaro - The Teardrop Explodes 

35. Blues For The Fisherman - Milcho Leviev & Art Pepper 

36. Shiny Beast - Captain Beefheart 

37. Nobody’s Perfect -Stiff Little Fingers

38. Hotter Than July - Stevie Wonder 

39. Snap Crackle & Bop - John Cooper Clarke 

40. Bass Culture - Linton Kwesi Johnson 

41. Organisation - Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark 

42. Countrymen - The Twinkle Brothers 

43. Freedom Of Choice - Devo 

44. Are You Glad To Be In America - James Blood Ulmer 

45. Diana - Diana Ross 

46. Shadows And Light - Joni Mitchell 

47. Kaleidoscope - Siouxsie And The Banshees 

48. Waiting For A Miracle - Comsat Angels 

49. Heartattack And Vine - Tom Waits 

50. Changes - Etta James 

 Also Mentioned • 

Real People - Chic • 

Gyrate - Pylon • 

Off The Coast Of Me - Kid Creole And The Coconuts • 

Absolutely Madness - Madness • 

Black Sea - Xtc • 

Travelogue - The Human League • 

Return Of The Durutti Column - Durutti Column • 

In Performance - Donny Hathaway • 

Phantom Tracks - Roy Loney • 

The Long Riders - Ry Cooder • 

Deguello - Zz Top • 

The Art Of Walking - Pere Ubu • 

Night In The Ruts - Aerosmith • 

Jeopardy - The Sound • 

Rev Up - The Revillos • 

Betrayal - Jah Wobble • 

Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Same • 

Cristina - Same • 

Do Animals Believe In God - Pink Military • 

Boy - U2 • 

Peter Gabriel - (3) • 

Argybargy - Squeeze • 

Taking Liberties - Elvis Costello • 

Commercial Album - The Residents

 

Joy Division's Closer is a breathtaking trip into darkness

Joy Division : Isolation

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On July 18, 1980 Joy Division released Closer, the band's final album and one that is impossible to separate from the tragic circumstances of frontman Ian Curtis's suicide. It would be years before we learned what led to the tailspin that ended with Curtis hanging himself May 18, 1980:  his worsening grand mal seizures due to epilepsy, his marriage falling apart and the pressure to try to shelve all of his troubles away to prepare for the band's first American tour. 

In retrospect the album reads like a suicide note but at the time the young members of the band really weren't paying attention to the lyrics.

"We'd go to rehearsals and sit around and talk about really banal things," says guitarist Bernard Sumner."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." 

They have all had to carry on with a certain amount of guilt, especially as the album's legacy has grown. Bass player Peter Hook says "people that are left behind are the ones that suffer".

The cover of the album is a photograph of a family tomb, selected before Curtis's death.

The band were not happy with producer Martin Hannett's studio wizardry but his reverb and delay treatments are  part of what makes the album so haunting. It sounds like it was recorded behind the "doors of hell's darker chambers".

Closer has become one of the best regarded albums of the entire decade. This review is from Smash Hits.

The band never got to promote Closer. They barely had time to grieve before reforming as New Order, adding drummer Stephen Morris' girlfriend Gillian Gilbert on keyboards.

In 2011 Peter Hook finally got to play some of the Closer songs live, standing next to his son. He said he got chills down the spine and that it was a wonderful moment he wished he could share with the other band members.

Remembering Ian Curtis

Joy Division : Twenty Four Hours

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On May 18, 1980 Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis took his own life at the age of 23, leaving behind a wife, a child and a musical legacy that has only grown over time. Curtis had been suffering from depression and epilepsy.

This post is hardly the only remembrance of this sad day. Peter Hook is marking the anniversary by streaming a 2015 gig in which he played every Joy Division song with his band The Light. The show will debut online across both Joy Division’s and The Light’s Youtube and Facebook channels. Although it will be free, fans are asked to make a donation to The Epilepsy Society.

Hook’s fellow surviving Joy Division bandmates Bernard Sumner and Stephen Morris will also be hosting an event to celebrate Curtis. The  free online event, ‘Moving Through the Silence: Celebrating The Life and Legacy of Ian Curtis’, will raise money for the Manchester mental health charity Manchester Mind and help mark the beginning of Mental Health Awareness Week.

As Hook relates in his memoir Unknown Pleasures, Joy Division was getting ready to tour America, home to Curtis' favorite bands The Doors, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. (Pop's The Idiot is apparently the last album Curtis ever heard.)

So, yes, I drove him home that Friday night and he was cock-a-hoop, full of it. We’d had a great practice and I was dropping him off. We were laughing and joking and every now and then one of us would go, ‘I can’t believe we’re fucking going to America!’ We were screaming in the car, jumping up and down on the seats, properly shouting, whooping, hollering: ‘Yeah! America!’
No ‘rather die’ about it.
This was on the Friday night. We were due to leave after the weekend. If the silly bugger hadn’t killed himself we would have been on a plane to America on Monday. If he’d known all along that he planned to kill himself, as some say he did, was he just putting it on, all that excitement? Was he that good an actor?

A last second addition to a Smash Hits issue in May of 1980

As it has been pointed out many times, the lyrics of the forthcoming album, Closer, read like suicide notes to bandmates.  In "Twenty-Four Hours", Curtis sings

Just for one moment, thought I'd found my way. 

Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away.

Looked beyond the day in hand, there's nothing there at all. 

Now that I've realized how it's all gone wrong, 

Gottas find some therapy, this treatment takes too long. 

Deep in the heart of where sympathy held sway, 

Gotta find my destiny, before it gets too late.