There’s a recurring sense of perverse enjoyment of antagonistic relationships, which is often actually set to an incongruously light-headed, cheerful backing.
#Twisted insane floorboards lyrics series
Noted stupid fucking cunt bastion of critical insight Garry Bushell savaged it in Sounds, complaining about a return to “the old Progressive Lie” and claiming that Devoto “consistently fails to communicate anything save his own undoubted superiority over the rest of the human race.”ĭevoto’s narratives are indeed fragmented, but all the more fascinating because they offer only glimpses of a story rather than spelling everything out there’s an alternating series of pointed barbs and helpless pleas to some unknown target, and some things you’d hope aren’t quite so autobiographical (well, y’know, “I will drug you and fuck you on the permafrost,” in particular). But Devoto’s heart had never been fully in the “punk” part of the equation even if the brilliantly tense lead single “Shot By Both Sides” vaguely resembled his former band (Pete Shelley wrote the singular guitar figure), the lyrics spoke of his mistrust of committing to ideologies and movements, of “losing himself in the crowd.” For the make-or-break performance of the song on Top Of The Pops, the normally intense Devoto stood still and listlessly mimed the song from behind a guitar and a shitload of eyeliner.īy 1979’s Secondhand Daylight, punk in a traditional sense was a distant memory for Magazine, and the critical reception was much more mixed the more synth-heavy, Low-influenced sound seemed to some to connote a terrifying throwback to the Prog Dark Years, and there was increasing frustration at the obscurity of Devoto’s lyrics. Their 1978 debut Real Life was well received, taking the manic energy of Buzzcocks’ Spiral Scratch and infusing it with electronic, krautrock and funk elements.
This is a man who later sang “my irritability keeps me alive and kicking” on “A Song From Under The Floorboards,” a which somehow twisted Dostoevsky’s vicious Notes From The Underground into a celebratory pop song.įor a while though, Devoto’s caprice couldn’t hinder the momentum surrounding Magazine. His interviews from the period are ridiculously contrarian and obfuscatory, and give the impression of a man desperate for people to be fascinated by him just so he can spurn and confound them.ĭevoto’s whole career was typified by this perversity, even to the point of self-sabotage in an early NME interview he talked of “negative drive,” a sort of contrary, antagonistic energy fuelled by anger and boredom. His relationship with this attention, however, was always pretty strained. For a man to be confident enough to leave Buzzcocks just as they’d burst onto the scene suggested he must have something fascinating up his sleeve. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.įor a stretch of the late 1970s, there was a lot of attention on Howard Devoto.
That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age.
Or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness.
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