Here, all the pieces come together perfectly. Maybe it was the change in producer, to Martin Hannett, or maybe it was an assuredness and confidence that comes with having played together in the same line-up for a few years, but The Correct Use of Soap is Magazine with their potential fully realised. Neither as indecisive as Real Life or as preserved in amber as Secondhand Daylight, the multiple moving parts of The Correct Use of Soap slide together perfectly; Magazine, as a playing unit, are on their best form here. Of course, it’s also no surprise the line-up would change soon, with McGeoch leaving for Siouxsie & The Banshees. If he took anything with him from Magazine, it was an experimentalism that didn’t need overtly to pronounce itself, and an exactingness of force that meant every note mattered. “Because You’re Frightened” opens the album with the giddiness of a carousel on overdrive, but there’s still a chill in the air; the cover of Sly Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” is an unlikely funk grind, synths like phasers on stun; “A Song From Under The Floorboards” is Dostoevsky in compact form, and just perhaps, Magazine’s finest moment.

– Jon Dale