10 Amazing Final Albums From Legendary Artists
The musicians that left this world with a classic LP in their wake and fans clamouring for more.
Death and art; two phenomena that are at the centre of life in many ways and become intertwined more often than we'd like to think. Whether it's Dante wrestling with mortality all the way back in the 14th century to Metallica's comprehensive study of the matter or Nick Cave's soul-baring examination of loss on 'Skeleton Tree', it's a subject which has been the driving force behind some fantastic work.
However; not all musicians set out for their material to be aligned with such a morbid subject matter, with the connection occurring organically when a musician leaves a rousing final statement before departing for the great unknown.
In the wake of the grizzled legend Leonard Cohen announcing that his upcoming album 'You Want It Darker' is the 'culmination of an extraordinary life', it's a fitting time to look back at the classic records that musicians produced as they unknowingly (or in same cases acceptingly) sped towards the end of their days.
10. Joy Division - Closer
Officially unveiled two short months after the band's frontman and leading light Ian Curtis took his own life at his home in Macclesfield, Joy Division are a band that inarguably disbanded at the peak of their powers.
While its predecessor 'Unknown Pleasures' may be the record that launched a thousand t-shirt sales and laid the blueprint for the droves of post-punk pretenders that would emulate their material, their sophomore effort 'Closer' is the band at their most startlingly brilliant. Written and recorded whilst Curtis' problems with epilepsy and prescription pill aided depression worsened and led him down a desolate pit of despair that he'd never recover from, tracks such as 'Atrocity Exhibition' and 'Colony' providing an unflinching window into his tortured, battered psyche.
With the band continuing to widen their musical palette and Martin Hannett once again bringing his seemingly endless stream of unorthodox production techniques to the table, the record's sound and the tragic event which it acted as a precursor to gives it a sense of otherworldliness that few other albums could possess.
The sinister basslines of Peter Hook on 'Twenty Four Hours', the jagged guitars of 'Passover' and the impenetrable despondency of 'The Eternal' may come as a shock to those whose understanding of Joy Division begins and ends with 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' but 'Closer' is a truly remarkable album that will swallow you whole if you let it. Whether his bandmates ever reached similar heights under their new guise of New Order is hotly debated.