Buzzcocks: Love Bites [DOMINO]

Why you'll love it

Domino's remastered reissue comes in an embossed sleeve with an 8-page booklet featuring an essay by Jon Savage, plus a download code. Love Bites reached No. 13 on the UK Albums Chart, the band's highest-charting album.

This edition

• Remastered
• Embossed cover
• 8-page booklet with Jon Savage essay
• Download card included

About the album

Less than six months after their debut, Buzzcocks were back in the studio, squeezing an album into a two-and-a-half-week gap in a heavy touring schedule in July and August 1978. Producer Martin Rushent recorded and mixed it with them, and the speed suits the songs: everything here is sharp, bright and in a tearing hurry.

"Ever Fallen In Love" is Pete Shelley's perfect pop-punk heartbreak, and "Real World," "Nostalgia" and "Sixteen Again" show how far his songwriting had come in a few months. Steve Diggle takes the lead vocal on "Love Is Lies," bassist Steve Garvey's "Walking Distance" and the closing "Late For The Train" are instrumentals first aired on John Peel's show, and "Just Lust" carries a co-write from "Alan Dial," the pen name of manager Richard Boon. Newcastle's Penetration, their tour mates that year, recorded "Nostalgia" too.

Trouser Press praised Rushent for sharpening the sound even further, and BBC Music later called it an essential purchase for anyone remotely interested in punk's history. The hand-drawn lettering on the sleeve is a deliberate nod to René Magritte. Ceci n'est pas une pipe, but it is a cracking LP.

Also at Kops: more Buzzcocks on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On United Artists / Domino (cat# REWIGLP127), a reissue of the 1978 album.