The songs that make up Love & Hate (in the English Countryside) are unique, which is really saying something if “unique” is being used not to mean “good” but in its proper sense of “singular” or “without analogue in its field.” Nobody ever made records that sounded like these; I think this is why it was hard for my teenaged self to find something to hold onto in their slightly chilly, neither-upbeat-nor-dour grooves. “They’re great,” Tom would say, “I saw a picture of them and I think they face toward the wings of the stage instead of facing the audience.” Tom had a complicated theory about how all Factory bands ought to have followed Section 25’s lead in this matter. My own theory is that Section 25, fifteen years after their dissolution, are standing bright-faced atop the catalogue of the label which has turned out rather surprisingly to be the one true holy Roman catholic & apostolic future of music, and that Love & Hate is an essential part of that future. So there you have it. Funny how things work out, sometimes.