For music fans of a certain age and outlook — old and misanthropic — there is nothing quite like Joy Division, the brooding yet strangely buoyant British band that oozed from the punk movement of the 1970s.

Though it recorded only two albums, neither of which attracted much attention at the time, Joy Division’s jagged melodies were an important influence on U2, Radiohead, Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, and a host of lesser talents — I’m talking to you, Depeche Mode — who made a mint mimicking their sound. But the mythology surrounding Joy Division also has to do with its baby-faced singer, Ian Curtis, who was 23 when he hanged himself on the day before the band’s first US tour.