Magazine @ HMV Picture House, 30 Aug
If you ever wanted to organise a middle-aged-men-who've-still-got-a-bit-of-an-edge holocaust (I don't know, David Cameron might - has anyone thought to ask him directly?) you could do far worse than organise a Magazine concert to get them all in one place. A clear reason why so many of them - one Irvine Welsh included - are here, might be to do with the fact that this is exactly what the band are too now. Which begs an interesting question: how exactly do you keep your edge?
One way, and one that Magazine prove from the outset, is in the perseverence of the questioning mentality. It is frontman Howard Devoto who takes the lead on this, coming to the mic before even the first song, and pulling out his old notebook. 'This is my old notebook,' he says, theatricalising, and playing the self-conscious artist. 'Here's something I wrote in it in 1978,' he says proudly, recalling the days of Magazine's genesis, before reading an extract that he and we both know is pretentious crap. Still ready to laugh at himself, this is in keeping with a range of knowing japes throughout the set that serve to undermine our preconceptions, give a little fun, and generally inspire a strong impression that there's no reason this needs to be a 'normal' gig, if ever such a thing as a 'normal gig' could exist in the first place.
Another way, for a band at least, is to create music that sounds edgy. This is an area where Magazine - one of the post-punk 'greats' and a band whose recorded music combines jarring roughness with transcendent multi-instrumentalism - fall short tonight. While classics like a A Song From Under the Floorboards sound grand and are rightly received rapturously, throughout the set there is a sense that the scale of sound this new tour is requiring - to fill the big venues they're now playing - has taken some of the bite from the material. Even the brutal 'I will drug you and fuck you' refrain of Permafrost, for example, has lost some of its original ironic snarl.
It is strange then, that what holds the set together and makes this gig work is the sound. While the songs may not shine as cutting contemporary messages, they sound great. When Magazine hit a groove - with Barry Adamson's bass underlining, and set guitarist Noko putting in a searing performance - they are capable of creating unembellished yet rich passages that sound entirely fresh, yet resonate meaningfully with these old lyrics of social disharmony and doubt. For all the iconoclasm, the careers that have over thirty years gone their own - mostly successful - ways, Magazine are still musicians, and play brilliantly together.
'How do you keep your edge?' is a question worth asking, not least because of the political implications of gravitating towards the centre. Even if tonight's show isn't a total triumph, Magazine still stand up as a troupe of genuine visionaries, unfussy heroes, and it's great to have them back.