Secondhand Daylight album cover
Secondhand Daylight

Magazine

1979
Virgin

If Real Life, Magazine’s debut album, had a kind of wildness about it at times, Secondhand Daylight feels precise, considered, sculpted. The group are clearly more aware of what they can achieve together, but they seem to be developing at an accelerated clip; the thing that stands out here, more than most anything, is the unrelenting energy of Barry Adamson’s bass playing, its wayward creativity. It feels like the driving force of Secondhand Daylight, even more so than the increased presence of Dave Formula’s keyboards and synths. Of the three Magazine albums that feature John McGeoch on guitar – the ‘classic line-up’, I guess – Secondhand Daylight is the most inscrutable and hard to get to know; there’s something in its address that feels strangely brutal, and the songs paint harsh realities of psychological disconnect and fractious relationships. It all peaks with the sexual sadism of “Permafrost,” a song with perhaps the most perfect opening line of all time: ‘thunder shook loose hail on the outhouse again.’ Devoto’s writing, here, is heading towards its peak.

Jon Dale

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