Buzzcocks - Another Music In A Different Kitchen [VINYL]

Like many first albums, Another Music In A Different Kitchen collected material written by the group - in particular Pete Shelley and Steve Diggle - that had been amassed during the previous years, going back to 1974 and 1975. According to Tony McGartland in his Buzzcocks: The Complete History, the songs were sequenced in the order that they were written. The play through seems to bear this out: the album begins in fast protest punk and ends in the seven minute, definitely non punk length Krautrock of 'Moving Away From The Pulsebeat.'Most of Shelley's songs on the first side concern the vicissitudes of romance, but the opener Fast Cars name drops US campaigner Ralph Nader in an ecological diatribe: "They're so depressing going 'round and 'round/Ooh, they make me dizzy, oh fast cars they run me down." 'No Reply', 'You Tear Me Up', 'Get On Our Own' and 'Love Battery' are sharp, short (all under two and a half minutes), speedy disquisitions on the tortures of interpersonal communication, love and lust played with a perfect balance between pace, abrasion and melody. Side closer 'Sixteen' is something else. It's longer and contains an avant-garde breakdown around two minutes in, recorded with each group member isolated and unable to hear each other. "It started off as a false ending," Shelley told me in 1977: "All sloppy, and then it carries on longer so that people are thinking, "Oh I've just clapped but they're not thinking - what's up?" and then it comes back in again." It was, as John Maher added, "A remnant of our chaos days." The five songs on side two reflected the group moving away from simple love tropes into something more complex: as Shelley sang on 'I Don't Mind', "Reality's a dream." Unlike the increasing militarism and violent posturing of the Clash, Buzzcocks aimed to explore male sensitivity and frailty ('This pathetic clown') - which in pop terms was still new, exactly what punk had set out to be. They began to use love songs as a conduit through which they could talk about other things: the nature of human relationships in a capitalistic society, the nature of reality itself.