1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 398. Buzzcocks – Another Music In A Different Kitchen (1978)

 

Another late Seventies British punk band, a different approach yet again (that wasn't meant to be a play on the album title, but I'll pretend that I was being all clever and Christgau about it). Buzzcocks largely keep the rapid-fire beats typical of punk, the overall grungy sound, but they go for lyrics more like the American punk, dealing more with teenage angst than calls for destruction, often with a good dose of wit. Pete Shelley’s vocals are higher and lighter than some contemporaries as well, and he comes across a lot less sneering and threatening than, say, John Lydon or Joe Strummer. 

Fast Cars, for example, features the lyric “Sooner or later, you're gonna listen to Ralph Nader”, referencing a road safety expert in a song that decries the danger of fast cars. This doesn’t sound very “punk”, in fact the antithesis of youth music of the last twenty years at least, but maybe Shelley is taking the role of a moaning do-gooder for the sake of parody?  

Elsewhere, there’s some fun wordplay with teen sexuality in Love Battery -

“My mad love battery - is running out of control

My mad love battery - is gonna swallow us whole

My mad love battery - never minces words

Don't discharge flattery - so don't listen to what you've heard”.  

Towards the end of the album the music even moves away from the more punk beats – Autonomy is relatively lilting and melodic, while Moving Away From The Pulsebeat is much closer to a classic rocker, a really good tune to close out the album with a complex drum beat. Presumably the title itself is a nod towards moving away from the simpler punk rock beats. 

It almost feels like we’re hearing the band evolve musically over the course of the album. This is their debut album, I suspect there may be at least one more on the list and it’ll be interesting if their style around the time that they release Ever Fallen In Love has become more poppy.