Real Life

3 for the music, 1 for the vocals

Over time this became less and less to my liking.

Fair

Late 70s post-punk, new wave. On the punkier, rockier edge of the genre, which I prefer.

Nice.

Pretty in Punk.

fine

Magazine's *Real Life* strikes me as one of the most convincing answers to a question that punk had barely finished asking. Having demonstrated that musicians could throw away the existing rules, what were they going to do with the freedom? Howard Devoto's answer was apparently to throw away the rules about throwing away the rules. This is a record of extraordinary musical curiosity. It is ambitious, elaborate, occasionally ugly, frequently beautiful, and gloriously unwilling to sit still. It borrows freely from progressive rock, art rock, electronic experimentation, cabaret and punk without appearing particularly interested in the boundaries between them. More remarkably, it manages to make these apparently incompatible elements sound like the natural expression of a single musical intelligence. That last point is important. There is a difference between eclecticism and coherence, and Magazine have achieved the latter without sacrificing the former. I already knew **Shot by Both Sides**, which had long since found its way into my Apple Music favourites. But familiarity with that one song provides a rather incomplete introduction to the album. It is probably the most conventional piece here, and even that description requires some considerable qualification. What surrounds it is a collection of songs that appear to have been written by people who regarded the ordinary conventions of rock music as a series of interesting suggestions rather than binding instructions. Devoto's departure from Buzzcocks is central to the record's history, but I don't think the album is best understood simply as a repudiation of punk. The temptation is to construct a neat narrative in which the former punk musician discovers sophistication and abandons the limitations of his previous work. That seems both unfair to Buzzcocks and inadequate to Magazine. Punk had already demonstrated a considerable range of possibilities. The question wasn't whether Devoto had outgrown something crude. It was whether he could take the energy, independence and permission that punk had provided and apply them to a much broader musical vocabulary. He could. And, crucially, he assembled musicians who could do the same. John McGeoch on guitar, Barry Adamson on bass, Martin Jackson on drums and Dave Formula on keyboards are not merely providing a setting for Devoto's lyrics. They're participating in the writing of the music's character. Sometimes the instruments appear to be in agreement; elsewhere they behave like people sharing a room without necessarily sharing an opinion. That tension is immensely productive. There's an unusually democratic quality to the arrangements, though not in the sense that everyone plays all the time or gets a turn at demonstrating their virtuosity. Rather, musical ideas are allowed to originate anywhere. The keyboards may define the emotional environment, the bass may carry the structural argument, the drums may change the direction of a piece, and the guitar may interrupt everything with a splendidly inappropriate observation. Devoto's voice is another such instrument. He's capable of magnificent sneering disdain, but there's much more going on than the familiar punk sneer. He often sings towards the bottom of his register, sometimes in a manner that seems almost conversational, before suddenly extending upwards into something altogether more dramatic. He can sound menacing, weary, drunken, arch, emotionally exposed or faintly ridiculous, occasionally within the same song. What particularly appeals to me is that he doesn't seem interested in the conventional ideal of a beautiful voice. He uses the ugliness, the awkwardness and the strain. His singing is often deliberately mannered, but the mannerisms communicate something. This is not a vocalist trying to conceal the peculiarities of his instrument. He's making the peculiarities part of the composition. And then there's the musical world in which all this takes place. I've begun thinking of a particular strand of late-1970s music as **post-Hansa**. It's a deliberately loose term, inspired by the Berlin-associated work of Bowie and Iggy Pop, especially *Low* and *The Idiot*. Strictly speaking, those albums weren't simply recorded at Hansa; important parts of their creation took place elsewhere, notably at Château d'Hérouville. But Hansa has become a useful shorthand for the aesthetic world that those records helped establish. It's a world of estrangement, electronic textures, fractured conventional song structures and a peculiarly European theatricality. Rock music suddenly seemed capable of expressing urban isolation without automatically reaching for the usual blues-derived vocabulary. Instruments could establish emotional distance rather than simply intensify a singer's feelings. Production could create spaces in which the ordinary assumptions of rock performance no longer applied. I'm not claiming that every element of Magazine's sound can be traced directly to those albums, or that a convenient historical label explains the band's intentions. But as a listening framework, *post-Hansa* seems useful. And Magazine's version is distinctly Northern English. There's something about the combination of bleakness, sardonic humour, theatrical discomfort and stubborn musical inventiveness that gives this record a different character from its continental inspirations. The other obvious reference point is early Roxy Music, particularly the two albums made with Brian Eno. Those records had already demonstrated that artifice could be an enormously liberating force in rock music, and that musical sophistication need not mean emotional solemnity. They could be funny, preposterous, threatening, glamorous and musically adventurous simultaneously. Magazine seem to have absorbed that lesson without inheriting Roxy's taste for glamour. Their world is colder and more angular, and Devoto possesses none of Bryan Ferry's interest in presenting himself as a desirable object. Where Ferry frequently inhabits his own romantic theatricality, Devoto sounds as though he's suspicious of the entire performance, including his own participation in it. **Definitive Gaze** announces these intentions almost immediately. The opening keyboards are beautiful. There's something modernist and cinematic about them, an expansiveness that seems quite removed from the compressed guitar assault one might expect from a record associated with punk. Formula establishes an entire landscape before the song has properly begun. And then Devoto appears, wonderfully sneering, apparently intent on making himself as uncomfortable a presence as possible within that landscape. But what really caught my attention was Martin Jackson's drumming. There's an almost breakbeat-like rhythmic intelligence at work, a sense that the beat is something to be investigated rather than simply maintained. It doesn't necessarily sound like the later electronic music that the term *breakbeat* suggests, but there's a comparable interest in the articulation and internal movement of rhythm. The song allows its instrumental ideas to develop at considerable length. That's one of the first signs that Magazine are operating with an unusually generous conception of what a rock composition can contain. The instruments aren't merely waiting for Devoto to return with the next verse. They're continuing the argument in his absence. I find that tremendously attractive. Too much rock music treats the sung material as the entire substance of a composition, with everything else functioning as introduction, accompaniment, decoration or an opportunity for someone to play a solo. Here, instrumental development is part of the main event. **My Tulpa** develops the album's interest in discomfort, particularly where desire is concerned. There's something potentially homoerotic in the imagery, although I wouldn't insist on any definitive interpretation. The lyrics seem designed to make the relationship between attraction and unease difficult to separate. Devoto is rarely an entirely reliable guide to what he wants or how he feels about wanting it. What delighted me musically was the saxophone. It's splendidly ungainly. There are moments when it seems to have escaped from an early Roxy Music session and arrived in the wrong room. Its playing has an almost amateurish exuberance, a sort of glorious disregard for good manners. I use *amateurish* here to describe its character, not the musicians' capabilities. There is a difference between being unable to play appropriately and understanding that inappropriate playing might be precisely what the music requires. One of the pleasures of *Real Life* is that the band repeatedly chooses character over conventional polish. And that distinction becomes increasingly important. This is an album full of excellent musicians who seem perfectly willing to sound ugly, awkward or even a little daft when those qualities serve the composition. The result is much more interesting than immaculate competence. Then comes **Shot by Both Sides**, the song most obviously connected to Devoto's earlier musical life through its co-authorship with Pete Shelley. It's a terrific piece of songwriting, and it reveals something essential about the band. For all their unconventional musical ambitions, they understand perfectly well how to construct a compelling pop song. The riff provides a direct, urgent point of entry. The chorus is memorable. The arrangement understands the relationship between restraint and release. And there is a beautifully judged modulation before the guitar solo that demonstrates just how carefully the song has been put together. Devoto's vocal performance is particularly interesting. He begins low, almost keeping the song's emotional temperature under control, before reaching upwards towards the chorus. The effect is not simply a louder expression of the same sentiment. It changes the character of the performance. It reminded me of the old commercial assumption that higher vocal registers communicate excitement and therefore sell records more effectively. Marc Almond's accounts of record-company thinking during the Soft Cell years came to mind. There's a peculiar history of commercial pop trying to encourage singers into expressions of emotional intensity that can be measured almost by pitch. But Devoto's handling of register is more interesting than an attempt to manufacture excitement. The low passages establish an attitude of contained alienation. The upward movement feels like that containment becoming unsustainable. There's a very good pop instinct at work here. And the song's brief encounter with the mainstream, including its appearance on *Top of the Pops*, is worth remembering. Magazine weren't producing inaccessible music because they didn't know how to write something commercial. They had a perfectly effective route into popular consciousness when they wanted one. But the world described by **Shot by Both Sides** is more disturbing and complicated than the immediacy of its riff might initially suggest. It belongs to a grown-up universe of vulnerability, exposure and suspicion, where allegiances are unstable and the individual is liable to find himself caught in circumstances beyond his control. That darkness isn't merely imposed upon the music by Devoto's voice. It's built into the tension between the song's energetic directness and its more troubled perspective. **Recoil** returns to something closer to straightforward punk urgency, although the playing retains Magazine's taste for expressive irregularity. The opening relationship between drums and bass is immediately compelling, and McGeoch's guitar makes the whole thing feel gloriously ugly and ungainly. It is short, aggressive and wonderfully alive. What interests me is that the band hasn't abandoned punk as an available musical language. They've simply stopped treating it as the only language worth speaking. A conventional account of musical progress might suggest that complexity replaces simplicity, or that ambitious musicians leave supposedly primitive forms behind. Magazine offer a much more attractive possibility: musical freedom means being able to choose simplicity when it works, and complexity when something else is required. **Burst** brings the Roxy Music influence into particularly sharp focus. I could almost imagine it belonging somewhere in the unruly world of *Roxy Music* or *For Your Pleasure*. But the comparison also demonstrates a difference. The early Roxy albums often sound like various competing ideas about the future of popular music colliding in a studio. Magazine have inherited the possibilities of that collision and begun using them as a coherent vocabulary. There's still plenty of unruliness, but it no longer sounds like an argument about what kind of band these musicians might become. They already know, even if the answer is difficult to describe. And that brings me to **Motorcade**, one of the album's most impressive compositions. Formula's introduction is magnificent: spacious, cinematic, and full of atmospheric suggestion. It's the sort of keyboard writing that makes a scene appear in the imagination before the lyrics have provided any particular setting. The treatment of Devoto's voice adds another dimension. There are backward-reverberation effects, or at least effects that produce that impression, which seem to place the voice in a strange temporal relationship with the music. The sound appears to arrive with a kind of ghostly advance notice of itself. It's an unsettling device, and it contributes to the sensation that the song's environment is somehow unstable. Then there's the rhythmic construction. Jackson's drumming repeatedly alters my sense of the music's pace and direction. The arrangement seems to entertain several different ideas of movement, sometimes accelerating emotionally without simply becoming faster. The rhythmic emphasis changes; the structure seems to shift beneath the listener. This is where the album's refusal to settle becomes particularly exciting. Ordinarily, one might expect a song to establish a groove and then exploit it. Magazine appear willing to establish a groove, explore its implications, become interested in a different possibility, and then pursue that instead. There's something almost deliberately alienating in this restlessness. The band seems quite prepared to frustrate an audience that wants familiar musical assurances. But I found it exhilarating. I get bored easily when a composition has exhausted its ideas but continues to repeat them. **Motorcade** offers almost the opposite problem: there are so many ideas that the listener has to remain attentive to avoid missing the next development. Hang around for a few seconds and something is going to change. McGeoch's guitar solo is particularly exciting. It's dissonant, abrasive and wonderfully expressive. Knowing his subsequent work with Siouxsie and the Banshees, it's difficult not to hear aspects of that vocabulary taking shape: a guitar that cuts across the musical surface, introducing its own textures and emotional disturbances instead of merely supplying another blues-rock solo. His playing doesn't demand admiration for its technical proficiency. It demands attention because of the sounds he's chosen to make. That's another recurring characteristic of this album. The musicians certainly possess technique, but technique is treated as a means of producing interesting music rather than as a reason for the music to exist. And it leads directly to one of the most important distinctions I found myself making during the listening. **This is progressive music without the self-importance that so often makes progressive rock intolerable.** I've long been wary of the kind of rock music that seems to regard complexity as an achievement in itself. The extended composition, the unusual time signature, the elaborate arrangement and the conspicuous instrumental proficiency can all become ways of inviting the audience to admire the musicians rather than engage with the music. At its worst, progressive rock seems to announce that we're about to witness something terribly clever, and that our principal responsibility is to recognise its cleverness. Magazine possess much of the ambition associated with progressive rock, but almost none of that ceremonial atmosphere. Their arrangements are adventurous because the musicians are curious. The developments sound like attempts to discover what happens when an idea is pushed further, not attempts to demonstrate how much musical education everyone possesses. I found myself inventing the term **post-punk prog**. It sounds contradictory, but perhaps it shouldn't. Punk had objected to the social and aesthetic assumptions surrounding much established rock music, not necessarily to the musical possibilities of unusual structures, extended instrumental passages or harmonic invention. Magazine reclaim those possibilities while refusing the baggage. There's also a difference in how the complexity feels. Some progressive rock seems assembled through elaborate studio manipulation, giving the impression that endless instrumental excursions have been made coherent afterwards with a splicing block. Magazine's compositions don't give me that impression. Whatever the actual recording and editing procedures, the music sounds conceived and performed rather than retrospectively rescued. Its strange decisions seem to emerge from the players' shared understanding of what they're doing. And the most delightful expression of that whole philosophy is **The Great Beautician in the Sky**. This was my favourite track. It opens in a marvellously sinister theatrical world, with a lurching, waltz-like six-eight movement that brought Berlin cabaret immediately to mind. I could almost see a slightly disreputable procession winding its way through a fictional city, accompanied by musicians who had become rather too enthusiastic about the evening's refreshments. Formula's keyboards are fabulous. They're simultaneously elegant and faintly ridiculous, which is precisely the quality this music requires. Devoto sounds gloriously intoxicated by his own performance. There's something of Joel Grey's Master of Ceremonies from *Cabaret* in the delivery, although the resemblance is a matter of theatrical character rather than straightforward impersonation. It's that particular kind of performance in which menace, humour, theatricality and a certain moral seediness become impossible to distinguish. And then the rhythm changes. The crooked cabaret procession gives way to a more direct four-beat punk propulsion. What might have been a novelty exercise in theatrical pastiche becomes something structurally much more interesting. The two musical worlds don't simply alternate for comic effect. They seem to expose different aspects of the same underlying personality. That's why the song made me laugh with pleasure. The changes are gloriously unreasonable, but they also make musical sense. It is serious compositional work undertaken with a wonderfully unserious attitude towards conventional decorum. I even heard something here that made me think of Alex Kapranos and Franz Ferdinand. Not a direct stylistic resemblance so much as a shared appetite for angular, mischievous art-pop theatricality: the ability to present something mannered and knowing while maintaining a genuine commitment to rhythm and movement. Magazine's world is considerably stranger, but the connection helped me identify one of the qualities I enjoy in both. Music can be arch without becoming sterile. It can be theatrical without being solemn. It can know perfectly well how ridiculous it is and become more compelling as a result. This is also where the **post-Hansa** and early Roxy influences seem to combine most successfully. The European cabaret atmosphere, the unexpected musical architecture, the sardonic English sensibility and the energy inherited from punk all become part of the same composition. It's an extraordinary piece of work, and I don't think its eccentricity is incidental to its success. The eccentricity *is* the method. **The Light Pours Out of Me** approaches the album's ambitions from almost the opposite direction. Instead of constant changes of character, the composition initially creates its power through repetition and restraint. The drums and bass establish the central rhythmic structure, and there's remarkably little melodic movement within it. Adamson's bass isn't simply supporting a harmonic progression. It is the foundation around which the whole arrangement is built. The musical interest comes from accumulation: new textures, increasing pressure and subtle changes in the relationship between the existing elements. This produces a profoundly claustrophobic atmosphere. The music seems coiled around itself, generating tension without needing to travel very far. Devoto's lyrics intensify the discomfort. I heard something suggestive of psychosis, or perhaps a delusional conviction of possessing some extraordinary significance. The imagery invites the possibility of a narrator who believes himself to be illuminated or anointed, although the nature of that illumination is deeply unsettling. That is an interpretation of the song's atmosphere, not a claim that the lyrics describe a particular psychiatric condition. Their ambiguity is part of their effectiveness. What's fascinating is the relationship between the words and the arrangement. The music's repeated structures can feel simultaneously powerful and imprisoning. The narrator may believe something immense is happening to him, while the listener hears an increasingly enclosed musical world. Then McGeoch's guitar opens the whole thing out. The harmonic change during the solo has an almost physical effect. It feels as though sunlight has suddenly entered a room whose windows have been covered. That was my immediate reaction: **the music opens out like sunlight**. It's a wonderful transformation precisely because it has been withheld for so long. And then the composition returns to its earlier state of controlled, coiled menace. The release hasn't solved anything. It has merely shown us that another emotional space exists, making the return to confinement more disturbing. Again, the most important musical event doesn't require Devoto to be singing. The arrangement has its own dramatic argument, and the guitar articulates a change that the words alone couldn't accomplish. That is a very sophisticated understanding of musical composition. It also exposes the inadequacy of dividing rock songs into vocal sections and instrumental interludes. In **The Light Pours Out of Me**, the instrumental development is not an interruption of the narrative. It's central to the narrative's emotional meaning. And then, rather wonderfully, **Parade** changes the emotional landscape again. I'm not generally a great admirer of fade-ins. They can feel like a rather lazy way of suggesting that music already exists somewhere beyond the listener's attention. But I'm prepared to overlook that objection here, because what follows is so beautiful. The piano-led arrangement is spacious, stately and almost luxuriant. After the nervous tension and rhythmic confinement of much of the album, the effect is immediately striking. There's room to breathe. Formula's synthesiser doesn't entirely allow the music to settle into conventional beauty. It introduces peculiar colours and small interruptions, as though something slightly alien is wandering through an otherwise recognisable musical setting. And Devoto's voice is magnificent. I found myself thinking of him as an **alien crooner**. He's offering something that resembles the emotional intimacy of a traditional ballad, but he can't quite make himself inhabit the role normally. His vocal mannerisms are still present. The unusual inflections, the slight ungainliness, the sense that the singer is approaching the melody from an unexpected angle: all the characteristics that might make him a difficult conventional vocalist become extraordinarily affecting here. The beauty doesn't exist despite the peculiarities. It depends upon them. And then the lyrics introduce that wonderfully strange image of oppressive heat and something apparently being hatched. It's an almost comic intrusion of surreal unease into an otherwise stately performance. I love the fact that Devoto cannot simply sing a beautiful song without allowing something disquieting to wander into it. There's also the saxophone, with a wheezy, almost comical quality that recalled Bowie's playing on **Tiny Girls** from Iggy Pop's *The Idiot*. It's a very particular sort of instrumental expression: vulnerable, slightly ridiculous and oddly touching. That resemblance brought the post-Hansa idea back into focus. The connection isn't simply one of electronic experimentation or bleak urban atmosphere. It's also an aesthetic willingness to permit sounds that would ordinarily be considered unsuitable or inelegant. A saxophone doesn't have to sound suave. A voice doesn't have to sound immaculate. An arrangement doesn't have to conceal its awkward edges. Indeed, those qualities can be the very things that make a performance emotionally convincing. **Parade** is an extraordinary ending because the album doesn't suddenly abandon its strangeness in order to become beautiful. Instead, it reveals how much beauty the strangeness has contained all along. And that led me to reconsider something fundamental about Devoto's singing. He's often discussed, understandably, in terms of his alienation, his theatrical disdain and his refusal of ordinary rock-star behaviour. But those descriptions risk making his performance sound primarily negative: a rejection of sincerity, accessibility or conventional emotional expression. I don't think that's adequate. There is a great deal of emotional expression here, but it arrives through unusual means. His deliberate ugliness is sometimes funny, sometimes threatening, sometimes protective, and occasionally profoundly beautiful. He doesn't discard feeling. He makes the listener work harder to locate it. The contrast between **The Great Beautician in the Sky** and **Parade** makes that especially clear. In one, Devoto is a grotesque cabaret performer presiding over a wonderfully unstable musical circus. In the other, he's almost tender, but the same vocal personality remains recognisable. The difference lies partly in what the instruments permit him to become. Which returns me to the extraordinary achievement of the band as a whole. Jackson's drumming is a major source of the album's structural imagination. He can provide direct punk momentum, introduce rhythmic instability or make a composition feel as though it's travelling through several different kinds of movement. Adamson's bass gives the music a formidable physical presence, particularly when repetition itself becomes the principal compositional device. It provides both propulsion and architecture. Formula's keyboards are essential to the album's atmosphere. They're capable of extraordinary beauty, but they're equally willing to become sinister, theatrical, intrusive or faintly absurd. They establish spaces and then alter the listener's relationship with those spaces. McGeoch's guitar is almost a running commentary on everything else. It can provide direct attack, disturb a harmony, introduce a new texture or open up a previously confined emotional landscape. His dissonance isn't simply an avant-garde gesture. It's expressive. And all four musicians demonstrate the capacity to let an idea develop beyond the point where conventional pop arrangement might have demanded that they stop. That may be the quality I admire most. The album is full of extended instrumental thinking, but very little of it feels indulgent. The developments are often surprising because they seem to arise from the particular character of each composition rather than from any general requirement to demonstrate ambition. One song is transformed by a change of metre and theatrical identity. Another derives its power from scarcely moving at all. Another allows shifting rhythmic emphases to create the sensation of a constantly changing landscape. Another becomes beautiful by allowing the awkwardness of the performance to remain intact. These are different solutions to different musical problems. There is no single formula being imposed upon the material. The record's connection with punk therefore seems less a matter of sound than of intellectual freedom. Punk had provided a powerful rejection of established authority, including the authority claimed by supposedly superior musicians and the rock establishment surrounding them. But rejection alone could never provide a complete programme for making music. Something had to happen afterwards. Magazine's answer is that the musician can recover all the possibilities previously associated with art rock and progressive composition without recovering the hierarchy that had made those forms so objectionable. There is no requirement to choose between intelligence and energy, between compositional ambition and physical excitement, or between theatricality and emotional credibility. And there is certainly no requirement to become solemn about any of it. That's what I find so refreshing about *Real Life*. It's capable of being tremendously clever without making cleverness its principal subject. The band seems to take musical ideas seriously while refusing to take the conventions of musical seriousness particularly seriously at all. Its humour is important. The ungainly saxophone, the drunken cabaret, the extraordinary vocal inflections and the occasional gloriously unwise musical turn aren't simply eccentric ornaments. They prevent the album's intellectual ambition from hardening into self-regard. At the same time, I wouldn't want to suggest that the record's restlessness is automatically virtuous. There's a legitimate question about whether a succession of unexpected ideas always produces a better piece of music. Sometimes a composition needs to settle. Sometimes repeating an apparently simple gesture gives it emotional force. An arrangement that continually changes direction risks preventing its strongest ideas from making their full impact. Magazine seem perfectly capable of embracing that danger, and occasionally they appear almost to welcome it. But the album also demonstrates that they understand the opposing principle. **The Light Pours Out of Me** depends upon extended repetition. **Shot by Both Sides** understands the pleasures of a strongly defined pop structure. **Parade** allows beauty and space to dominate. The band's invention isn't simply a compulsive refusal to repeat itself. It is the ability to judge when repetition, transformation, simplicity or elaborate development will best serve the music. And that is why the album feels coherent despite its extraordinary range of ideas. The coherence lies not in a uniform arrangement or a consistent emotional temperature but in a shared willingness to treat every composition as an independent problem worth investigating. I also find it fascinating how much of the record seems to have one foot in the musical future without losing the character of its own time. McGeoch's guitar suggests possibilities that would become more familiar in later post-punk. Some of the rhythmic thinking anticipates approaches that would eventually become common in dance and electronically constructed music. The synthesiser textures and cinematic arrangement have connections with the electronic pop that would emerge in the following years. There's even that thread of theatrical, knowing, rhythmically adventurous British art-pop that makes the comparison with Franz Ferdinand seem less fanciful than it initially appears. But it's important not to reduce *Real Life* to a collection of things it anticipated. The musicians weren't making a historical reference document for future bands. They were making an album in 1978. And the record's achievement is immediate, not merely prophetic. It is thrilling to listen to. That's ultimately the test which matters most to me. I can recognise and admire musical sophistication without particularly wanting to hear the result again. I can respect an album's importance while finding the actual experience of listening to it tiresome. History is full of records whose influence is considerably more interesting than the music itself. *Real Life* doesn't present that problem. I was engaged almost from the first notes of **Definitive Gaze**, and the engagement only deepened as the record progressed. The changes of rhythm, the unexpected textures, the theatrical absurdities, the moments of genuinely disconcerting beauty: each seemed to give me another reason to keep listening. By **The Great Beautician in the Sky**, I was thoroughly delighted. By **The Light Pours Out of Me**, I was admiring the way the band could create a completely different kind of drama from almost static musical material. And by **Parade**, I was struck by how moving Devoto could become without surrendering any of his extraordinary vocal mannerisms. The sequence matters. The album's emotional range is considerably greater than the opening impression of sneering alienation might lead one to expect. There's aggression, humour, desire, menace, absurdity, claustrophobia, expansiveness and tenderness here, often in combinations that resist ordinary categorisation. I think that's why the record has made such a strong impression on me. I enjoy music that makes me curious. I enjoy hearing musicians test the limits of an idea, particularly when they're willing to take a few unreasonable decisions along the way. I enjoy arrangements in which instruments occupy distinct expressive roles rather than merely contributing to an undifferentiated mass of sound. And I enjoy performances that possess enough confidence to tolerate awkwardness, ugliness and humour. Magazine satisfy all those appetites, frequently within the space of a few minutes. If I have a reservation, it is only that the record occasionally seems so determined to discover what else might happen that it runs the risk of leaving an idea behind before I've quite finished enjoying it. But even that restlessness is inseparable from much of what makes the album special. It never becomes empty novelty or mere technical display. There is always something worth hearing. The result is an album that genuinely expands my understanding of what rock music was capable of becoming in the immediate aftermath of punk. Not because Magazine abandoned punk's principles, but because they took its liberation of musical possibility further than a narrow definition of punk could accommodate. They rediscovered the freedoms of progressive composition, the theatrical mischief of early Roxy Music, the dislocated atmospheres associated with Bowie and Iggy's Berlin period, and the physical urgency of punk itself. Then they made something unmistakably their own. It's clever, certainly. It's sometimes deliberately alienating. It's full of awkward, ungainly, thoroughly unreasonable musical decisions. But it's also funny, exciting, extraordinarily inventive and frequently beautiful. I loved it without qualification. And I find it particularly satisfying that an album so densely populated with musical ideas should leave me wanting to hear the whole thing again, not to decipher some hidden intellectual achievement, but simply for the pleasure of spending more time in its company. That's a remarkable achievement for a debut album. Punk may have kicked the door open. Magazine seem to have walked through it, looked around at the possibilities, and decided that the building could do with several more rooms.

Not bad - listenable, but hardly memorable.

Best one I saw was a “not bad post-punk” album. They had jams, got hard and can definitely rock. But sometimes they extended and roamed around just a little too much.

I really like how eclectic this album feels. There are some great songs, some that combine the punk spirit of the record with a pretty nice goth rock sound. And, it really sounds pretty well and fresh. The vocals also sound pretty original, matching greatly the spirit of the record. So, although it has its flaws, it’s still a very energetic and enjoyable album.

There was some good guitar playing on this and a few good songs, a lot of them meandered in a weird way that made them feel like they went on forever though. My favourites were Burst, Motorcade, and The Great Beautician In The Sky.

Another 4 on this list

Another postpunk entry. Not bad.

Punk except everyone in the band is extremely bored

Pretty mid rock/punk but decent guitars 3

This album had great energy! With that being said, there were times that I found this theatrically out there in a way that did really fall well on my ears.

This was so uninteresting I didn't notice when it was over.

In theory this is my kind of thing but I don’t know I guess I just wasn’t really feeling it yesterday. It was okay

Weird cacophonic all-over-the-place post punk art rock thing. It's brilliant.

This album started off strong, but the songs started to meld into each other (not in the good seamless way) and it started to overstay its welcome with the album length.

day 22 of not rolling Aja by Steely Dan this is unsurprising because i went into this knowing i don't like post-punk. the "new wave and art rock" addition from the wiki summary certainly didn't help my lack of eager anticipation. still, i did sincerely try to listen to this and enjoy it, and i think there's some musicality in some of the tracks, but otherwise, this is just noise to me.

Some songs I was all in, but overall pretty underwhelming.

Brandon can have a little Howard Devoto. As a treat.

Not sure how I missed this band. Pretty good.

I got my hopes up with the start of the record, and I was let down from the fourth track onward. I mean, circus music I don't need.

Post-punk, new wave, art rock.

I didn't know any of these songs before except goldfinger lol but not this version. I liked it! British post punk or whatever

okay

"Post Punk and Art Rock" as genre descriptors typically mean an unenjoyable album for me, but that wasn't the case for this. Pretty fun, and I think it merits at least a second listen. I'll add this to my collection so I don't forget to do that. I really wish I could give this my full attention, but I listened to Chingon on the way to work today, and I have electric mariachi on the brain ⭐⭐⭐

Cool record. Understand it was highly influential for some bands I really love. Lot of connections to other groups too… Buzzcocks, Siouxie and the Banshees. You can hear how. Strong Post-punk work with the foundations of alternative rock evident. Enjoyed this one, but just for its historical relevance but also it was just a great listen.

Just did not enjoy this at all

5.5/10

Jamais écouté avant. Je ne sais pas comment j'étais passé à côté de Magazine jusque là. Real Life tombe pourtant pile dans l'époque et les sonorités que je préfère, dans cette période où les musiciens issus ou inspirés du punk commencent à en déborder les limitations sans en abandonner l'esprit. Son interprétation inventive, presque prog, du post-punk ne tape pas toujours dans le mille, mais quand ça marche, c'est brillant. Et on sent toute l'influence que Howard Devoto et les siens (en particulier le guitariste, John McGeoch) ont pu avoir sur toute une génération de musiciens, particulièrement au Royaume-Uni. Top : Shoot by Both Sides Flop : Recoil

Real Life by Magazine took two or three listens today before I could really form an opinion on it. I've always loved the Buzzcocks, so I was looking forward to hearing what Howard Devoto did after leaving the band. Post-punk is also very much my thing, so I had high hopes for this album. I have to admit, I struggled a little on the first listen. Nothing particularly grabbed me, and I wasn't entirely sure what to make of it. However, by the second listen, something clicked, and the more I played it, the more I liked it. What I really enjoy about Real Life is the variety. It takes the raw energy of punk and pushes it in a completely different direction. There's much more going on musically, with interesting arrangements, great guitar work and a darker, more atmospheric sound. The production is excellent, and the lyrics are clever, unusual and full of character. You can hear the connection to the Buzzcocks, but Magazine are clearly doing something different. This feels like punk growing up and becoming more adventurous, without losing the attitude and energy that made it exciting in the first place. There's plenty of melody here too, which really started to stand out after a couple of listens. The only real disappointment for me was their cover of "Goldfinger". I thought it was terrible and completely out of place compared with the quality of the rest of the album. Thankfully, there's more than enough good music elsewhere to make up for it. Overall, Real Life is a really good album and one that definitely rewards repeated listens. I went from being fairly underwhelmed to thoroughly enjoying it, and by the end of the day I was hooked. A great example of how post-punk took the foundations of punk and turned them into something much more interesting. I'll definitely be listening to this again. Favourite track: "The Light Pours Out of Me". What a great tune. Dark, atmospheric and full of energy. Easily the standout for me. Least favourite track: "Goldfinger". A terrible cover and the one track I could happily do without. Album artwork: Cool, artistic and very much of its time. A great cover that suits the music perfectly.

Great album. Loved the vibe.

I’ve been distracted and am behind - I’m sorry to say I can’t remember this album anymore lol I think I liked it

This was similar to receiving a dessert you didn’t order. A pleasant surprise. The sweetness tops off the meal. A bit of crunch, a silky flavor on top, and touch of salt to make it all pop.

Prog punk? Pre-new wave. Better than if seems at first glance. Muscular bass lines and keyboard flourishes clash in a cacaphonous rejoice. Not sure if you can dance to it but it gets things moving. Special shout out to John Leckie who utilized talents honed working with Pink Floyd to bring this and other post punk classics to life - to this day.

Fairly lively album feeling a bit more contemporary than the 80s

Strong punk album. Suffers from sounding British but that's a me problem. When they're on they have catchy grooves. Sometimes the 80s elements show up strong, like the first track but they sound fine & tends not to overstay their welcome. I see Barry Adamson is the bass player. His album on here is a super weird delight. His bass shines here. 3

I knew one song by this band (Song From Under The Floorboards) although it’s not from this album. Anyway, I enjoyed a lot, lots of delightfully weird sounds throughout, whatever was going on at the start of My Tulpa was pretty cool.

my tulpa is the most beautiful, sexy, raw song ever made

Pretty good album

Great album, 5.

It was a nice break from my routine

Meh. It was a fine punk offering. Nothing remarkable.

Nothing to write home about here.

Loved this. I can’t believe I’d never heard them before.

What can I say? I like post punk.

I liked bits of it, but not convincing it's for me.

Post punk? Nothing too notable

Favorite songs: Definitive Gaze, Shot by Both Sides, Burst, Motorcade, The Light Pours Out of Me, Parade

04/10/2026 I have never heard of these guys and I am still not convinced by them. The album picked up towards the end. Spotify listeners: 107.2k

Bland but good.

6/10

Amazing album. Way ahead of its time instrumentally, so many layers and little switchups, they always manage to keep things exciting and unpredictable. The rhythms are so odd and creative. The songs progress a lot during their runtime to the point when sometimes it doesn't feel like the beginning and the end of a song are still the same song. The singer also has a really good voice, very unique but full of presence. The songs sound twisted, cold, with quirky keys hidden underneath these surreal guitar passages. Some of the sections are straight up insane, like the manic ending of My Tulpa with these crazy saxophones in the mix. Also love the kinda glitchy breaks at the end of Recoil. So many great tunes, popping hooks and amazing guitar tones.

I was surprised by this- early New Wave meets rock/punk vibes. A lot of fun- lots of good songs. Overall 3.5/5

I could never really get into this band. It’s all fine music but nothing really grabs my attention for long. A couple of really good songs and then songs that are just fine

yuck!!!

good stuff

Really enjoyed this. Great mix of new wave and punk. Remined me a bit of Seventeen Seconds in that, while I wasn't really grabbed by any specific song, the whole album was a ride. Favorite Songs: My Tulpa, Burst, Motorcade, Parade

Fav: Recoil L: Parade 3 Cool stuff but I never got used to the vocals unfortunately. Cover: 3.5 Name: 3 Minecraft Parody: Elder Guardian in the Sea (The Great Beautician in the Sky)

pretty alright. 3/5

Standouts: Shot by Both Sides, Definitive Gaze 4/5

Post punk is such a strange genre for me. Maybe because its more an aesthetic than a sound? I'd call it one of my favourite genres, but then a lot of things categorized as post punk just do nothing for me. This is pretty much in that category unfortunately.

Yeah, not a devoted Devoto fan, but this is good 💪

This was just, like, nothing to me. It was fine but I couldn't identify anything making it of note in any way. I've forgotten it already.

I kinda liked it.

This was a great discovery. I’d heard of Magazine, but despite loving Wire and other bands of the era this was new to me. Fantastic, weird, fun rock with an edge of post punk and late 70s bleakness. Also I can hear where this influenced early Cardiacs maybe, so that’s always a plus

some hot ahh tracks here love shot by both sides and definitive gaze, it gives Halloween and rock and punk and amazingness.

Sounds very much like music of its time. Although I did not mind it, nothing stands out.

Not really a big fan of new wave

Musically I actually enjoyed this, but the singers complete lack of skill or charisma dragged it down.

This album sounded like the album cover looked to me. The keyboard stuff and instrumentation was interesting and mostly good. But man I didn't like the singer.

Real Life by Magazine was overall a nice, enjoyable listen. I really liked the theatrical, quirky black humor of "The Great Beautician in the Sky". While it didn't completely blow me away, it was a solid post-punk record with some really fun and unique tracks.

I like British post-punk, but Magazine was previously only familiar to me by name. If I still bought records, Real Life would go on my shopping list.

super dynamic and crazy. some of the best post punk i've heard in a minute loved it.

Great.

Very interesting sounds. Will need to revisit.

This is a really good album that relies heavily on punk influences, I would even dare to say it's a punk album, but with great craftsmanship, interesting and authentic riffs, synths and vocals. It feels kind of like new wave in a way that resembles the great antics of The Cure, "The Great Beautician In The Sky" reminds me of Kraftwerk in the awesomest ways, other tunes like "Recoil" showcases the catchy melodies and simple sofistication of the Buzzdocks, and some other times, they are just trying new things and I appreciate that

I liked the first song but the rest wasnt it

# Album Name: Real Life # Artist: Magazine # Rating: 4/5 # Comments: I enjoyed this one. A nice dose of post punk # Top Tunes: shot by both sides / tulpa / burst / motorcade / Light pours out # Would I listen to it again? Yes

Kind of like a hip, talented, house band. It’s not bad but also not worth becoming obsessed over.

Howard Devoto and Magazine sound like what it would be like if Paul Foot, the comedian, decided to front a new wave band. For a laugh.

It was really cool listening to this in yesterday’s heavy London rain. Devoto is one of the great punk era vocalists and here he’s in full paranoid voice.

My Tulpa sounds like if Killer Klowns from Outer From Outer Space was directed by David Lynch in Twin Peaks.

Nothing exceptional about this

Great songs on this one.

Devoto had a real gift for finding collaborators - Shelley, McGeoch, Formula, Adamson, and a host of producers. Shelley’s ear for a catchy guitar riff is of particular importance to the two stand-out tracks here, but otherwise Devoto's posture doesn’t do as much for me as, say, Colin Newman. Real Life has an impressive legacy amongst a slew of important 80s and 90s British bands and I do like some of the later albums, but this one is a bit of a miss.

Sounds like some sort of weird combination of David Bowie and Violent Femmes and Lou Reed, but not in a good way.

Striking cover and monoprint design by artist Linder Sterling, with photography of the band by Adrian Boot. Some excellent tunes with a hint of Buzzcocks.

More brash instrumenty shouty post punk.

I hate it when streaming services don't denote expanded versions, as I'd prefer to hear the album as it was originally released first (and, yes I know it wasn't originally intended to be streamed, but I can't go out and buy every album on the list just to hear them). That aside, I did enjoy this one. Always good to hear some late 70s post-punk.

I just listened to this album a week or so ago, as I have been diving into New Wave/Post Punk of the late 70s and early 80s. Enjoyed it the first time, enjoyed it more the second time. Great New Wave ... Will listen again!

3/5

Magazine is one of those post punk bands that you don't hear often quite a lot when people talks about the genre. With names like The Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees or even Bauhaus being the most prominent, there is another inflextion when it comes to late 70's: The thing is, there was another artsy and somewhat experimental direction and influence instead of the dark and poetic vision many had back in the day. The Smiths might be both depending on who you ask for, but back in the day, there was Gang of Four, Television and of course Magazine. Real Life saw the light in June 1978 as the debut album of the british band that included a re-recording of their debut single Shot by Both Sides, which was Written by Howard Devoto and Pete Shelley from Buzzcocks after an argument about politics with Devoto's girlfriend who told her "Oh you'll end up shot by both sides" ¿a premonition of what we are living today? An anthem for radical centrism? Maybe yes, maybe not. The unpredictable guitar solos from John Mcgeoch tied to the sociopathic and terrifying voice and lyrics of Howard Devoto gives the whole record some kind of spooky elements that actually can be percieved not only in the single already mentioned but also in the opener "Definitive Gaze" or even in the ones that closes the record like "The Light Pours Out of Me" or "Parade" Without a doubt, this one it's a non skippable anthology of sounds regardless of the quality of the band, considering this is their debute album. If you already know post punk or if you are new to the genre, this one should be a special choice that everyone should listens to.

Has all the elements one would expect from a post punk album for better and for worse. Slightly more “better” than “worse.” But probably not an album I would reach for again.

We needed to hear this album to understand the end of rock bands in the late aughts. Magazine leans into the weird, trying to get people’s attention, with the same results as a toddler might receive. 2.5

When I was first getting into this sort of music, & having fallen in love w/ one of the greatest (art)-punk acts of all time, which would be Television, I had a moment where I thought Magazine were on those heights as well. & it'd be a lovely thing to have Television & Magazine be your two fav groups - who'd be the others? TV On The Radio? Radiohead? Anyway, Magazine are certainly no Television, & Real Life is no Marquee Moon. It still is a very good record, & a memorable one, but it sorta, kinda boils down to different versions of that great hit, 'Shot By Both Sides.' It doesn't strike me as the artsy-fartsy thing that prob rubbed people the wrong way when it had been released in '78. It's just the songs are long, & the lyrics abstract/paranoid.