Post-punk is what happened when punk’s energy met art-school curiosity. Wiry guitars, basslines that lead rather than follow, and voices that talk, chant and confront as often as they sing.
New to it? Start with Unknown Pleasures. If you want something from this decade, make it Fontaines D.C.’s Romance.
Punk burned fast. In June 1976 the Sex Pistols played Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall to a small crowd, and two of the people watching went on to form Joy Division. Within two years, three chords felt like a dead end. Wire’s Pink Flag packed 21 songs into just over half an hour and stripped rock to the bone.
Joy Division went inward. Unknown Pleasures made Manchester sound cold and vast, and its pulsar-graph sleeve became one of music’s most recognisable images. Others went outward. Talking Heads borrowed from Afrobeat on Remain in Light, Bauhaus laid the foundations of goth, and by 1989 The Cure had taken the gloom all the way to Disintegration.
Every generation rediscovers it. Interpol’s Turn On the Bright Lights brought that Manchester chill to New York in 2002. A decade ago, a new wave grew up in South London, around venues like Brixton’s Windmill, and gave us Shame, Squid and Dry Cleaning. Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw speaks rather than sings on New Long Leg. In Dublin, Fontaines D.C. bonded over poetry and turned the city’s streets into songs on Dogrel.
Closer to home, Nick Cave started out in The Birthday Party’s ferocious post-punk before forming the Bad Seeds. There’s more in our Australian collection.
The scene is still moving fast. Shame’s Cutthroat is sharp and swaggering, IDLES turned their fury tender on Tangk, and Viagra Boys stay deadpan and absurd on viagr aboys. Fat Dog, meanwhile, sounds like a party falling down the stairs. Every record in our post-punk vinyl collection is a new pressing, best played loud.
Want it hazier? Head to Shoegaze & Dream Pop. Want it bigger? Try Alternative. Want it scrappier? There’s Indie.
