album // Secondhand Daylight
A year on from their brilliant, but flawed, debut Real Life, Magazine - Howard Devoto, John McGeoch, Barry Adamson, John Doyle and Dave Formula - released the superior Secondhand Daylight. The album was produced by Colin Thurston, who manages to realise the band's potential highly successfully - if Real Life hinted at greatness, Secondhand Daylight simply confirms it.
The album kicks off with a slow synth and sax-filled introduction on 'Feed The Enemy', which whilst quite pretty, initially fills you with prog-rock dread, but Formula's distinctive keyboards are quickly replaced with a very Martin Hannett-esque sparse production reminiscent of Closer by fellow Mancunian post-punkers Joy Division. It's a sinister opener, Devoto out-dooming even Ian Curtis, the addition of a female choir on the chorus failing to leaven the bleak mood. In contrast, despite its title, 'Rhthym Of Cruelty' is positively upbeat, harking back to the more pop elements of Devoto's former muckers Buzzcocks, with a quite uncharacteristically euphoric chorus. 'Cut-Out Shapes' has a processed drumkit and angular guitar riff not unlike Wire's less-polished 'Fly In The Ointment', benefiting from a leaden Adamson bass undertow and in the more energetic second section Formula's synths dominate more successfully than elsewhere. With three distinct 'chapters', it does edge toward prog-ery, but works well nonetheless.
'Talk To The Body' is another upbeat punk / new wave number, with phased guitars and subtle synth flourishes, and a snarly, tense vocal from Devoto, concluding with the repeated phrase 'Hammer come down'. Adamson - in Peter Hook style - provides the lead melody on the frantic, but clearly emotionally bitter 'I Wanted Your Heart'; with a central chorus of 'This is as close as I get', albeit shrouded in tones of messrs Bowie, Ferry and Pop, and a humorously piss-taking improvised and funky finale, this is perhaps Devoto trying to avoid becoming too emotionally 'open'. 'The Thin Air' is a pretty, if maudlin and earnest instrumental simultaneously recalling Bowie's 'Warszawa' from Low, and also a number of Barry Adamson's own later compositions.
Beginning with slow and simple piano motifs, 'Back To Nature' - not the Fad Gadget song of the same name - rapidly becomes a fast-paced and ragged rock song, featuring some of Formula's best - and ironically most Fad Gadget-esque - synths. At over five minutes, it's fraught with tension, finding Devoto singing with strained emotion. 'Believe That I Understand' is, conversely, a fairly conventional upbeat pop-punk song, again strongly reminiscent of crossover-period Buzzcocks, Formula supplying a pretty synth melody while Devoto finds new emotional depth in his vocal.
'Permafrost' is easily the most chillingly dark song that Magazine ever recorded, a mood which producer Thurston teases out of the largely processed instruments. Doyle's snare drums are crisp and almost synthetic, while Adamson's deep sub-bass sounds queasy and edgy; Formula's synths are not imposing, adding to the frozen chill elsewhere in the song. Devoto's mysterious, sinister lyric 'As the day stops dead / In the place where we're lost / I will drug you and f**k you / On the permafrost' is nothing if not apocalyptic, rounding off the album on a disturbing, eerie note.