At the time I could not get my head around Section 25. My friend Tom insisted, quietly but still somehow belligerently, that they were the best band on the whole label, possible better than Joy Division. That would be an exaggeration, I think, but it’s not hyperbole to say that the songs on Love & Hate (in the English Countryside) haven’t just stood the test of time, but have beaten time at its own game, somehow managing to retain their feeling of being a step or two ahead of the curve even though they were recorded in 1985. The ninth song on the album, “Conquer Me,” is a marvellously self-contained paranoid universe of ringing guitar, lilting bass, politely crashing drums, and slightly distraught vocals. It has the ability, as do many of these songs, to change the entire mood of the room in which it plays. You might not even notice it while it’s playing; its dynamics are all around the quiet-to-middle end of the spectrum, so it can float just underneath the world of noticeable things. Wherefore, when you do notice it, you have to sort of lend yourself to it: the result being, by the end of the song’s six minutes, that you have become totally immersed. It has to it a distinctly religious feel.