Tracing the branches of the family tree that has the band Magazine at its centre should encourage those who aren't familiar with the English post-punk outfit's canon to take a listen. The reward will be in discovering three solid, unique albums (and one uneven fourth effort) produced during the band's four-year heyday.
Bandleader Howard Devoto formed Magazine in 1977, having departed power-punks the Buzzcocks with more esoteric pursuits in mind. When the time came to release debut album Real Life the following year, he had gathered around him three of the four outstanding musicians who would forge the band's progressive new wave sound.
Guitarist John McGeoch would later make invaluable contributions to Siouxie and the Banshees and PiL, bassist Barry Adamson would go on to play with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds on four defining albums, and keyboard player Dave Formula would join McGeoch and Adamson in Steve Strange's New Romantic ensemble Visage.
Of the first three Magazine albums, 1979 sophomore release Secondhand Daylight possesses the coolest heart.
Where Real Life shakes the tip of punk's rattlesnake tail, and 1980's The Correct Use Of Soap presents the softened edges of funk-pop, this album roams the forbidding terrain of introspective, synth-heavy epics.
It gives Devoto the space he needs to crank up his wide-eyed, alien-among-us persona as he alternately spits and drawls cryptic lyrics that point to the darkness and madness in volatile relationships.
From the slow build-up of opener Feed The Enemy to the closing bars of the beautifully bleak Permafrost, the journey through Devoto's glass-strewn world is gripping. A reconstituted Magazine, minus Adamson and the now deceased McGeoch, last year released a worthy fifth album, No Thyself.
