Buzzcocks
United Artists Singles Box Set
DOMINO
Back where they belong: on vinyl, in a dozen original sleeves.
When we lost Pete Shelley in 2018 we lost one of the greatest pop craftsmen humankind ever produced. His uncanny ability to deliver concise, engaging exemplars of edgy, post-punk minimalism with durable mainstream appeal never left him – Buzzcocks’ final album, The Way (2014), maintained the reunited combo’s perpetually upward creative trajectory – but it was the seven-inch singles the band released for United Artists between 1977 and 1980 that represent him best. When programmed back-to-back on essential vinyl-age compilation Singles Going Steady (and its expanded 2001 CD edition) they represented an unassailable legacy, the punk era’s equivalent of The Beatles 1962- 1966 Red album. Minimalist, thrashpaced, laced with cynicism and humour and delivered with occasional gobbets of sneer-lipped spite, but irresistibly perfect pop all the same.