Howard Devoto: It Only Looks as If It Hurts: The Complete Lyrics 1976-1990 (Paperback)

In 1976, one year after the publication of Dylan's tome, Devoto began his career by co-founding Manchester's early punk band, the Buzzcocks. Inspired by the Sex Pistols, who in smashing all the rules had made virtually anything possible, the Buzzcocks emerged as a band with lots of clever things to say and lots of energy with which to say them. Witness this contemplation of impending mental disorder from the song "Breakdown":

"So I hear that two is company for me it's plenty trouble / Though my doublethoughts are clearer now that I am seeing double / I'm gonna breakdown, breakdown yes."

Palpable here is Devoto's breathless delivery of the longish lines that became emblematic of punk music. But Devoto's ambitions quickly strained against punk rock's limitations, including its tendency toward verbal excess and prevailing anti-intellectualism. As Devoto himself succinctly put it, "I'm not stupid and I refuse to pretend to be."

The following year saw Devoto with his second band, Magazine. Devoto's writing during the next three years would display greater power and economy, transcending the punk genre while still retaining much of its immediacy and directness:

"The newcomer arrives, / Possession and guilt in his face. / Apologises to the customs man / For the gaping hole in his suitcase. / Says, "I've seen where promises are made, / I've seen how people are undone. / It's always done man-to-man, / One-to-one." Combining trenchant insight with uncommon literateness, Devoto's words display an affinity for memory which, for me, rival those of quotable poets like Yeats and Eliot. Anyone who has listened more than once to any Magazine album is sure to have acquired some favorite "Devoto quotables":

"Keep your silence to yourself."

"My mind, it ain't so open / that anything could crawl right in."

"I'd have been Raskolnikov / but Mother Nature ripped me off."

Devoto's words are often memorable for their imagery:

"Another sick monkey with a saintly face."

And, on occasion, for the fearlessness of their honesty:

"I suspect you ain't so sweet / As the lust I'm concealing. / My skin will crawl back home to Ma. / I've lost my way in my feelings."

For this reviewer, Devoto's lyrics with Magazine represent a high-water mark. His subsequent work, both as a solo artist and with the band Luxuria, find Devoto's verbal powers undiminished:

"An avalanche buries the bridge / While scornful eyes on a windswept ridge / Peer down at me in cold storage."

However, much of this later work lacks the directness and emotional resonance of the Magazine era. Further, it must be said, especially of early Luxuria, that the worst of it today seems more pretentious than clever:

"There's only ever been one soft option, one blank cheque / One deep breath to take you up to the neck. / You need more, I'll get you some / See me okay with Rimbaud bubblegum."

No doubt, some of the emotional impact of Devoto's lyrics is imparted by the music provided by his collaborators. But this is true of Dylan's writings as well. The first criterion of lyric as literature is whether it can stand on its own, apart from the energy and excitement generated by its musical backdrop. For much of Devoto's work, the answer is "yes," and this sets him apart not only from his punk and post-punk contemporaries, but from almost everyone else as well.

The second criterion is whether a lyric stands the test of time. Song lyrics, whether punk or pop, are usually intended as disposable product and not as a legacy for the ages. But lyrics have a noble tradition dating back to the roots of Western culture, and it is clear that a select few lyricists have written words in which people find enduring value. As Bob Dylan put it:

"She took out a poem, and handed it to me. / Written by an Italian poet from the 13th century. / And every one of those words rang true / And glowed like burning coal / Pouring off of every page / Like it was written in my soul."

It is patently unfair to make comparisons between modern song lyrics and the words of Homer and Dante, and time will tell whether Devoto's lyrics -- or any product of this ephemeral age -- can bear the burden of the millennia. Now that we have the perspective of ten to twenty-five years to judge Devoto's words, it can be said that many of their cadences still ring true, searing the memory and stirring the soul...