Magazine
Miles Hunt
Slade Rooms, Wolverhampton
Thursday June 30

As we've noted before, no band splits up for ever these days. Sooner or later, they all come back.

Which, on the face of it, is illogical: why, then, split up in the first place? Why do careers tail off and terminate, only to be revived with great fanfares at a later date? Sometimes I think it's a case of not knowing what you've got till its gone. The post-reformation Magazine are regarded with a kind of awestruck reverence these days, feted and acclaimed as doyens of all that was cerebral and innovative in the after-punk musical landscape. It wasn't always like that, mind.

The band's fourth album, Magic, Murder, And The Weather, was generally regarded as a bit of a damp squib, and frontman Howard Devoto's subsequent projects - his solo album and his post-Magazine band Luxuria - were treated with a kind of bemused indulgence. Nobody much seemed to think they were all that great. But at least dear old Devoto was still at it.

Then it all went quiet - for twenty years or so. Howard Devoto dropped off the radar. The other members of Magazine dispersed to other bands, other lives. In those two decades everyone came to realise just how good Magazine really were. By the time the band reformed, their place in the pantheon was secure. The band's greatness had never been doubted by some of us, mind. But sometimes it takes time for the world at large to catch up.

And so, here we are, in the prosaic surroundings of Wolverhampton's Slade Rooms, a rock 'n' roll watering hole named after the bootboy glam--rockers who - after Sunbeam cars and Rudge bicycles - are probably Wolverhampton's most famous exports. Magazine are warming themselves up for a new go-around: a new album, a new tour. It all starts, rather incongruously, here.

It starts right now with Miles Hunt, him out of The Wonder Stuff, tweed-suited like a trendy farmer, toting an acoustic guitar. He's flanked by violinist Erica Nockalls, in her 50s party dress effortlessly the most glamourous person in the room.

Together they brew up an amiable hoedown, Miles Hunt's affable between-song chat and the cheery strumalongs of the songs themselves setting up an odd, but happy, contrast with Magazine's cerebral angularity.

And now it's time to get all cerebral and angular. "Welcome to Magazine version six point zero"' announces Howard Devoto. "Service pack one. Thank you for upgrading." On the face of it, that's a typically gnomic Devoto remark, but he's got a point. Magazine have been through all manner of convolutions over the years. This line-up features John Doyle on drums - Magazine's second drummer - Devoto's erstwhile partner in Luxuria, Noko, on guitar - Magazine's fourth guitarist - and, on bass, Stan White replacing the busy-elsewhere Barry Adamson. Of the five people on stage tonight, only keyboard wizard Dave Formula and Devoto himself were there right at the beginning, in 1978. Version six? It's not like I've been counting, but it must be at least that.

But this is authentically Magazine. The band's spiralling sound, guitar clawing upward like a manic mountaineer, is still present and correct. Dave Formula's electronic interjections - at once punctuation and foundation of the Magazine sound - still cut through.

Devoto himself, a genial figure, deceptively un-rock 'n' roll, presides with self-effacing grace amid the tumult. His vocals as ever are a dryly precise recitation, ranging from matter-of-fact to cryptically passionate.

But then, with the Magazine songbook at the band's disposal, the band could've come out playing kazoos and still pulled it off. The band tosses off 'The Light Pours Out Of Me' as the very first song, and it says much for the strength of Magazine's repertoire - and the sheer confidence of the Version 6.0 band - that they can treat a song most others woud keep in reserve for a grand finale with such casual unconcern.

'Motorcade' retains all its slow-motion menace, 'Real Life' sends Devoto areroplaning all over the stage, and 'A Song From Under The Floorboards' - that anthem of remorseless, unrepentant self-analysis - has lost none of its bite, even though you can't quite believe that the jovial Devoto of today still feels that way.

A new song raises its head - apparently an open letter to the late lead singer of Joy Division, which drops a hint that wherever Magazine go next, the recondite muse of Howard Devoto will surely be along for the ride. We get nothing from Magic Murder And The Weather, mind. Perhaps that album's lukewam reception was shared by the band, and although it's true that Magazine did rather tread on the soft pedal with that one, it's a shame to see those songs wiped out of the band's repertoire altogether.

But when the pounding, urgent dynamics of 'Shot By Both Sides' drop on us from a great height, all quibbles are blown away. When that riff points itself at your head, nothing else matters.

So, Magazine. Rebooted, upgraded. Ready to take all the reverence we can give 'em. And poised to give us more in return. Gentlemen - it's a deal.

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