BUZZCOCKS: THE WAY (2014)
1) Keep On Believing; 2)
People Are Strang Machines; 3) The Way; 4) In The Back; 5) Virtually Real; 6)
Third Dimension; 7) Out Of The Blue; 8) Chasing Rainbows Modern Times; 9) It's
Not You; 10) Saving Yourself; 11*) Disappointment; 12*) Generation Suicide;
13*) Happen; 14*) Dream On Baby.
Look out, the cocks are buzzing once more (or
should that be «the buzzes are cocking»?)! After an 8-year long break, Shelley
and Diggle are back with a brand new rhythm section (Chris Remmington on bass,
Danny Farrant on drums), a brand new producer (David M. Allen, known best of
all for producing a string of records for The Cure in the 1980s), and a brand
new way of releasing their stuff — via the PledgeMusic system, which runs on
direct fan support. Apparently, the band wanted to find out if it still had any fans left — enough to finance
the recording and release of yet another LP — and guess what, either there are
still enough people around to want to hear a brand new Buzzcocks album, or
studio fees are going down at the same rate as oil prices. In any case, all
these nasty generous people have essentially stripped me of the right to begin this
review with the proverbial «who the heck needs the Buzzcocks in the 21st
century?» rhetoric question. They have not stripped me of the God-given right
to say bad things about the Buzzcocks, though, so brace yourselves.
On second thought, though... the funny thing
is, The Way does not really sound
all that bad. In fact, compared to the last one, two, three... five Buzzcocks albums, it sounds
downright involving! First and
foremost, it has the absolute best production values on a late-period Buzzcocks
record, hands down. Perhaps they went easy on sound compression or something,
but the guitars have a sharper, brighter, crisper sheen even when they are
sticking to chainsaw buzz — and sound even better when they go for cleaner
riffs or a less distorted sound in general. Maybe we have the producer to
thank for that (after all, he did work on Disintegration,
one of the most magnificently produced albums of all times)... who knows? all I know is that this sound comes in far
more colors than the fifty shades of grey on all their records from the 1990s
and the 2000s.
Second, it's got a handful of really enticing
songs. ʽPeople Are Strang Machinesʼ, for instance, has nostalgically playful
oh-oh-oh-oh backing vocals à la David
Bowie, nice lead lines and a moody chorus — not that the song title tells us
anything we didn't know before, but they tell it with plenty of conviction this
time. ʽOut Of The Blueʼ expertly plays with stop-and-start structure and
throws in a simple, efficient, and not totally stolen garage-rock riff.
ʽChaising Rainbows Modern Timesʼ often gets mentioned as the one song on here
that comes most close to emulating classic-era Buzzcocks, and it does, except
that I am not too happy about the main rhythm melody sticking way too close to
the ʽBlitzkrieg Bopʼ pattern. And ʽSaving Yourselfʼ is probably the darkest,
most uncomfortable finale to a Buzzcocks album ever — in fact, this whole record, in light of everything that we
know about the band, might be their darkest ever, with way too few songs about
boys and girls and way too many about surviving in a strange new world.
I know what you're thinking, and quite a few
people out of the few people who noticed and discussed the record said the
same things — the Buzzcocks sound old
here, older, more grizzled and tired than ever before, and like all old and
tired people, they now feel more at ease whining at the horrors of «virtual
reality» and all that other crap than doing what they used to do best (debating
about the fifty ways to leave your lover, that is). The tiredness is indeed
reflected in the tempos (slower than usual), the vocals (Shelley's range and
energy has gone down), and the lyrical themes. But if we are to nitpick about
nuances and subtleties, this is compensated for by the improvement in texture
and melodicity, and by the very
simple fact that finally, the Buzzcocks are coming to terms with their age and
acting like it — like any other veteran on the field, they have earned their
right to complain about the younger generation and its values, even if the
younger generation has a legal right to ignore every single word of it. (One of
the bonus tracks is actually called ʽGeneration Suicideʼ, so there!).
I almost thought about giving the album a
thumbs up, in fact, before I pinched myself back to reality (I mean, will I
ever get the urge to listen to at least one of these songs again? Hardly!).
However, and I do mean that honestly, this was, indeed, the only post-reunion
Buzzcocks album that did not actively annoy me — an album that sounded like
they really wanted to make it because something in their hearts urged them to,
rather than simply a mechanical requirement like «well, we're musicians, we're
supposed to make records, so let's go make another record, even if we know
beforehand we're not making any serious money on it». Nothing here makes me
yearn for a follow-up, but it's still nice to add another bunch of aging
punkers to the small collection of punkers who know how to do it well (like the
Adolescents, who, today, are anything but, yet still manage to preserve their
integrity).
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