Buzzcocks: A Different Kind of Tension [DOMINO]

Why you'll love it

Domino's remastered edition adds an 8-page booklet with an essay by Jon Savage and a download code. The album reached No. 26 in the UK, and Rolling Stone's Jon Dolan later called it the best of the band's first three.

This edition

• Remastered
• 8-page booklet with an essay by Jon Savage
• Download card included

About the album

By 1979 Buzzcocks had already written a stack of the greatest singles in British punk, and Pete Shelley was itching to see how far the form would stretch. A Different Kind of Tension, made at Eden Studios with producer Martin Rushent, is where the Manchester band started pulling the walls out.

The first side is classic Buzzcocks, tight, melodic and fast. Shelley's "Paradise" and "You Say You Don't Love Me" are heartbreak at full speed, while Steve Diggle chips in "Sitting Around at Home" and the bruising "Mad Mad Judy." Side two heads somewhere stranger, from the anxious chug of "I Don't Know What I Want to Do with My Life" and "Hollow Inside" to the sprawling, hypnotic "I Believe" and the radio-static coda "Radio Nine." Steve Garvey and John Maher keep it all locked tight.

The New York Times put the band's magic down to the pull between pop lyricism and all-out rock energy. Malcolm Garrett's sleeves went squares for the first album, circles for the second and triangles here; we assume a fourth would have needed a protractor.

Also at Kops: more Buzzcocks on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Domino (cat# REWIGLP128), a reissue of the 1979 album.