Buzzcocks

Though this "best of" release overlaps the indispensable Singles Going Steady quite a bit, Operator's Manual gives the listener a compelling overview of the Buzzcocks' career up to 1981. In addition to the eleven singles, fourteen songs are culled from the Buzzcocks' first three albums, offering an essential look at their early songbook.

Punk's most incandescent singles band was rarely just catchy or even catchy-abrasive--these guys had a vision. Pete Shelley's wry, acrid, eager, inside-out romanticism connected with every kind of near-adult, and why not? But I'm betting that what inspired him to insist that his anger was about sex, defying punk's party line and inventing "power pop" in the process, was also what kept him in the closet until "Homosapien." (Grade - A)