When Pete Shelley passed away in 2018, Steve Diggle became the only remaining founding member of the legendary Buzzcocks. Instead of replacing him, they continued as a three-piece, with the remaining members Chris Remington and Danny Farrant in the band since 2008 and 2006 respectively and released Sonics In The Soul in 2022. They have now followed that up with the band’s twelfth release Attitude Adjustment, an excellent album from start to finish that does a great job of showing what made the Buzzcocks who they are but also branches out a bit as well. That classic sound is evident out the gate with the straight-ahead punchy punk of “Queen of the Scene,” the slightly slower “Games,” which also has a hint of a rootsy undercurrent, and the mellower “Seeing Daylight.” “Poetic Machine Gun” and “Tears of a Golden Girl” both find them shifting in more of a classic punk direction, the former with a couple of psychedelic breaks and the latter with more of a pop side. Slower, heavier, noisier and darker, “Heavy Streets” is an interesting departure that at times comes across sounding like something that Bowie would’ve recorded in Tin Machine. Bookended by two fifty-five second musical interludes titled “One of the Universe (Part One)” and “One of the Universe (Part Two)”, “All Gone to War” is a nice, stripped down acoustic track that is a complete shifting of pace. Not really what you think of when you think Buzzcocks, album standout “Jesus at the Wheel” is a gorgeous, very melancholy, largely acoustic cut that rolls along and digs deeper in your brain as you listen. The extremely catchy “Just a Dream I Followed” is another super melodic, extremely catchy punk blast and “Feelin' Uptight” follows the same punk path but is a little repetitive and to me is the weakest cut here. Ironically, it’s followed by another of the album’s high points in “Break That Ball and Chain,” an incredibly fun track driven by a Motown beat that gives it more of a mod Sound. The album winds up with the perfect closer with the anthemic ballad “The Greatest of Them All.” Attitude Adjustment is a welcome addition to the Buzzcocks discography.
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