Best Song on Closer

"Decades."

That would be my second best. If only there were 9 threads so we could choose them all, eh?

Atrocity Exhibition.

i love me some 24h

The whole of the side two is the best. Impossible to choose.

"Isolation".

a means to an end :o

seconded.

I picked A Means To An End, out of the blue, out of instinct, without even giving it any thought.

But I remain ashamed that I didn't pick Decades.

this one's a little easier (but not much)

All these votes for A Means To An End - funny I've always thought of that one as the weak track.

isolation is 'the one you can dance to'. the live version on still has some srs bass, eh

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

means to an end.

this is one of those albums that ought not be separated into individual tracks, it's best heard as a whole entity - but i voted for 'heart and soul' which i *think* is the best stand-alone track here, taken individually, apart from the other eight.

'decades'.

gotta go with "decades," but there are some GREAT songs here...track-for-track better than Unknown Pleasures: "Atrocity," "Isolation," "Passover," "A Means to and End!" This is just one of the fucking BEST albums.

really, so many of these are worthy, but Twenty Four Hours is so fucking intense.

Yeah, this should have been a "what are the 6 best songs on Closer" (and then a "which two songs did you immediately exclude from the 6 best songs on Closer poll" poll) poll.

How hard are these polls getting? (and they are all the better for it).

This album means so much to me that picking one track seems impossible. But, if pushed, it must be "decades". An almost melancholy way to say goodbye and show us what might have been and remind us of how good this band were.

If Decades is "almost melancholy", I'm not sure I want to know what "melancholy" sounds like!

It's "Decades"

heart and soul, but only barely over decades

"Decades."

i went for "colony" because of bernard's fierce guitar play. this song sounds as if it predates the others. it has more of an energetic punk feel to it. but to be honest there are seven faves for each day of the week. everything after "isolation".

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The Eternal 2
Colony 1
Passover 0

ILM OTM - except, I really do like The Eternal, but only that one botched live version in the Preston Warehouse.

hmm

'The Eternal' is great, but I would have probably picked one of the top 4 over it.

A bit surprised 'Atrocity Exhibition' did so well. My least favourite cut.

I agree with Jeff, though I like "The Atrocity Exhibition" - this album basically gets better and better as it goes along. I much prefer it to Unknown Pleasures.

I prefer Unknown Pleasures.

Fitting that for an album best played start to finish, the last and first songs on the album placed first and second, respectively. Great poll.

Isolation is not the first song on the album, though. It's not even the first on either side of the vinyl LP.

FUCKING HELL, missed this poll too.

it would have been "twenty-four hours", without a second's doubt.

but sonic and emotional perfection is hard to qualify.

I'm surprised that The Eternal is so low. Just an incredible song. Probably my most listen to Joy Division song and best on this album.

but passover is so much better than isolation. you people are totally nuts. it has this tension, this hanging in between. whereas isolation is a cliché in song. one of about five jd songs i could live without.

yeah passover is great, as is colony (i always like JD's metalish stuff). u mad, people.

24 hours is totally mindblowing. while most of these tracks have a sense of resignation about them, 24 hours thumps along with a desperate urgency, predicting all things catastrophic and fearing the worst, but scavenging for answers and reason all the same. hope is portrayed in the starkest and most barren of ways - elusive and perhaps unattainable, but within the grasp of imagination.

don't think i could possibly choose between 24 hours, Heart and Soul and Colony

I'm surprised that The Eternal is so low. Just an incredible song. Probably my most listen to Joy Division song and best on this album.

OTM

A Means To An End!

Yeah, 'A Means To An End' would have got my vote, too... love the thudding percussion and octave bassline. There's kinda a link to 'Blue Monday' there.

What has always puzzled me is the synth on Decades, which sound out of tune or "sick" (and not in a particularly good way). The live versions sound even worse, so I'm guessing it was an effect they were aiming for.

It's never struck me as being out of tune or out of place or anything? It's been a long time since I listened to any of the live stuff, though - a big part of the appeal of Joy Division for me is the production, I'll admit. Much as the band themselves disagree.

I refuse to choose

The synth on eternal sounds amazing wtf

decades I mean

Did Dr X O’Skeleton get banned for the opinions he expresed above? Should have

Agree. New Order played "Decades" when I saw them last month and it was great, severe at first, closer to "Elegia" by the end. It was like they absorbed the song's title and slowly achieved angel-like detachment -- Wings of Desire in reverse.

That sounds incredible. Decades is one of the most hypnotizing and harrowing recordings I’ve ever heard. A weary lament coming directly from hell.

And still so pretty!

I know! Especially the end

I wrote a review of this album well over a decade ago where I said,

With Ian Curtis hanging himself not long after the album's completion, these nine songs have come under so much scrutiny as people searched for answers. There appears to be many clues but when the album is looked at as just simply the next Joy Division album, it really is a fantastic step forward. The best evidence of this are the three tracks that end the album ("Twenty Four Hours," "The Eternal" and "Decades"). Very long, slow pieces, they are all epics in their own right and would've been towering highlights of any other record, even separately. But sequenced here they seem to be the bittersweet end to something so important and ahead of its time; it's almost too much.

Still agree with that. I genuinely don't know how I would have voted in this one.

Beautifully written, Austin

Austin otm

I mean, the synth pads in the chorus of "Decades" do seem (intentionally) pitch-bent and 'sick'-sounding, which is a p cool effect. The synth on the live version on Still sounds more like it's suffering from some kind of tuning error, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seCDZ8zhfYY

I'm no synth expert, and am half-assedly shooting off after breakfast, but the synth strings on the recording of "Decades" still sound a bit like there's e.g. some kind of LFO on the pitch to me, compared to this video. The Powertran Transcendent 2000, which they also used does allow for an LFO on pitch, as well as pitch bend.

Maybe, I'm sure I saw another YouTube of a guy playing "Decades" on an ARP Omni-2 (I know, I've got too much time on my hands) which got much closer (oops) to the original.

Not that I know what they used on this recording xp

It was an ARP Omni-2.

It seems that there has been a lot of discussion of this online, with some claiming it's a Mellotron (seems unlikely), others suggesting various synths (ARP Omni-2, ARP Solina, Transcendent 2000). Found this unsourced quote, attributed to Sumner, in a couple of places:

"The Omni was good, but you had to process it, like we used to put it through a graphic equaliser and then split the bands up. We used to put it through a Marshall Time Modulator as well, to get that ’78 record’ effect: you know, sort of speeding up and slowing down the way a Mellotron does."

If it's true, that could explain it.

mother i've tried please believe me, i'm doing the best that i can
i'm ashamed of the things i've been put through, i'm ashamed of the person i am

^ most devastating couplet ever given the circumstances

mellotrons were notorious for going out of tune live iirc but yes, it doesn't seem a very joy division kind of an instrument

but if you could just see the beauty