Real Life by Magazine

Real Life is Magazine's debut, out on Virgin in June 1978, and it's the record Howard Devoto quit Buzzcocks to make. He'd walked out on them early in 1977 wanting something more ambitious than three chords and a sneer, and in Manchester he found it with guitarist John McGeoch and bassist Barry Adamson. John Leckie produced, at Abbey Road of all places.

The result is punk that has been reading books: jagged guitars, keyboards that lurk and loom, and Devoto's sardonic, arch vocals floating above it all. It carries a re-cut "Shot by Both Sides", the band's first single, while "Touch and Go", from the same sessions, was released as a single ahead of it but left off the album. The charts were only lukewarm (number 29 in the UK), but time has been kinder: it is now held up as one of the first British post-punk albums.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.