MAGAZINE

Secondhand Daylight

Genre: INDIE / ALTERNATIVE

Colour LP

Boomkat Product Review:

The 1979 sophomore side by Devoto and co’s post-punk pioneers is relaunched as part of reissue program with prior and subsequent LPs as staunch reminders of Manchester’s ever-shifting music heritage and templates for everyone from Morrissey and U2 to Radiohead and MGMT

As the story goes, Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley formed punk band The Buzzcocks after witnessing The Sex Pistols at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976, issued the legendary DIY single ‘Spiral Scratch EP’ adorned with Linder (Sterling’s) artwork, and promptly disbanded to form Magazine with the anthemic ‘Shot By Both Sides’, pointing in new, literate directions after punk had calcified into convention.

Completed by inspirational guitarist John McGeoch (RIP), Dave Formula’s keyboards, and Moss Side don Barry Adamson on bass, Magazine would distill aspects of prevailing proggy art-rock-pop of Bowie, the glam of Roxy Music, and aspects of punk-pop with an aloof, queered s-punky thrust and artful lyrics that distinguished them from the snarling milieu while holding to sort of dance-ready grooves.

After breaking ground twice with Buzzcocks and ‘Real Life’, nine months later Magazine injected more synths into their sound on ‘Secondhand Daylight’, and resembling Bowie more than ever thanks to the debut production job of Colin Thurston, who had previously engineered Bowie’s ‘Heroes’ and Iggy’s ‘The Idiot’. Again, like Magazine’s debut, it sounds hoary and too showy to this hack’s particular ears (simply, did not grow up in that era), but evidently has gone down in history as a real touchstone for so much to follow, as you can hear it’s imprint on loads of intricate art-rock and indie to come.

Colour LP (9)