Post-Punk: 2007/2017

I hope you'll forgive me starting a new thread for this topic, but I didn't find much with searching, and hope this can serve as a general-purpose thread for the discussion of contemporary post-punk (and/or, you know, whether such a thing exists, the value of evolving traditions vs. the artifice of revivals, etc.). As a springboard to conversation, I'm happy to present a new 'box set' in the tradition of the '1981' set and the new '1979' set (both of which can be downloaded these days from my Musicophilia blog.

'Post-Punk: 2007/2017' is a document of my crash course in this sort of music--which aside from a few favorites I've included, I literally didn't even know existed until a few weeks ago. From when I first heard such a thing existed I've gone from trepidation, to skepticism, to voracious seeking in that time, and I hope for anyone who is like me and didn't know this existed it'll get you at least mildly optimistic, too.

https://musicophilia.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/draft2_ppp-0717_sampler.jpg

'Post-Punk: 2007/2017'

From the hundreds I've encountered, the acts I've chosen to include are:

A Projection · Ablebody · Agent Side Grinder · Anika · Ashrae Fax · Ausmuteants · Aviaries · Band Aparte · Behavior · Beach Fossils · Beak · Bent · Black Marble · Blau Blau · Blood Sound · Blood Sport · Bobsleigh Baby · Carola Bony · Bootblacks · Cellular Chaos · CFCF · Chromatics · Cold Beat · Cold Cave · Cold Waste · Corners · Corridor · Cowtown · Crumbs · The Dance Asthmatics · Daphni · Death & Vanilla · Dirt Dress · Dirty Ghosts · Disappears · Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein · Drab Majesty · Eagulls · Eat Skull · Electrelane · Electricity In Our Homes · Erase Errata · Esses · Estrambote · The Estranged · Explode Into Colors · Exploded View · Factory Floor · Fear Of Men · Forests · Foster Body · Freak Heat Waves · Frustration · Fujiya & Miyagi · Gesture · Glintshake · Gold Cross · Golden Teacher · Grass Is Green · Grass Widow · Joana Guerra · Hdspns · Holograms · The Knife · Koban · The Kurws · The Lanskies · Lithics · LCD Soundsystem · Lunch · M!R!M · Massicot · Mazing Vids · Melt Yourself Down · Mere Women · Mermaidens · Micachu & The Shapes · Minuit Machine · Mode Moderne · Moss Lime · My Disco · Naked Lights · New Blood · New Fries · The New Sound of Numbers · No Zu · Normal Love · Omni · Opposite Sex · Otzi · Ought · The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart · Parquet Courts · Peaking Lights · Plastic People · Pow! · Preening · Preoccupations · Priests · Primitive Motion · Primitive Parts · Prinzhorn Dance School · Protomartyr · Ravioli Me Away · Frankie Rose · Sacred Paws · Savages · Shadowlands · Shopping · Sneaks · The Soft Moon · Surplus 1980 · Taiwan Housing Project · Talk Normal · Terrible Truths · Terry · Total Control · Total Victory · Trash Kit · Tunabunny · Unur · Uranium Club · Var · Varsovia · Vats · Viet Cong · Virginia Wing · Vivian Girls · Winkie · Wint · The World · Yvette · The Zygotes

For my part, I'll freely admit I don't think there's anyone amongst this new wave I've encountered so far who is on par with the greatest of '78-'82: There's no Talking Heads, no Slits, Wire, Family Fodder, Raincoats. And yet, I don't mean that as an insult, because "the greats" aren't really what excite me about '78-'82, but rather the incredible breadth and depth of exuberant exploration the movement fomented. And in that regard, I think this current period is a legitimate successor: these bands are from everywhere, tapping into every style and moving toward new ones. While there are plenty of completely sincere but utterly boring de facto Joy Division cover-bands, etc., there are many who aren't just checking stylistic boxes. So I'm equally excited by the quality of what has already been made, and the potential that even better things can develop going forward.

So: who am I missing? Can pop music generally and post-punk in particular (arguably a futurist movement) become the basis for traditions? Should they? Is "the zeitgeist" just a way of making novelty the mandatory highest good, or do cultural phenomena in the modern (Modern?) age have sell-by dates?

moss lime - calabria <3

this is impressive!

one thing, though - while i'm not (immediately) going to quibble some of the stuff you've left out, the inclusion of multiple tracks from the same album on different playlists is weird, especially (for example) multiple tracks from the crap micachu album and nothing from the good ones

repeating artists (and even albums) sends out a clear message that you haven't found quite enough post-punk. which sounds ridiculous after an endeavour like this, sure

regardless, i'm looking forward to hearing this :)

Imago, you must be a 'Where's Waldo' champ--I think there are 4 repeat artists out of 130 : ) I'd never include an artist more than once in an individual mix, but the '1981' box had many repeat artists (out of 400+ included) across the set because the individual tracks fit their respective themes/mixes. Same here I felt like--the few I included twice were because the tracks really captured what the mix was after to where I couldn't see arbitrarily cutting them.

But--please do tell me who I left out--this is partly a ploy to find more of the good stuff! That said, I listened to literally hundreds of records/artists that I just didn't care for enough to include...

Thanks!

Am onto the second one of these (in some weird order I think) - the first thing to really catch my ear has begun - and it's the one I already know - Glass by Total Control haha - and if you'd also included Carpet Rash by them I wouldn't have blamed you :P

Is there a particular reason you started at 2007? Cause I tend to think of the modern post-punk revival as starting in the early 2000s, but that could be for a different mix.

Have you heard Diat yet? Seems like they would be in your wheelhouse.

MarkoP, 2007 is somewhat arbitrary, other than the revival I vaguely remember circa the early 2000s seemed slicker and less broad based, and more media-hyped? Or maybe I just didn't like it as well... But in any case, it seems like momentum has built especially in the last few years. Or at least a bulk of what I encountered and liked was from 2012 and on. I could see doing a one-off mix for te early/mid-2000s, or maybe I'm totally off base and a lot of great stuff was happening then. I just remember Franz Ferdinand and The Strokes being called neo-post-punk and thinking no thanks.

SA, I bought a Diat album on recommendation but for sone reason it didn't click, at least for the mixes. Maybe in a future installment if there are any?

Radio 4, Liars, ...

+1 for Liars (or did they miss the 2007 cut-off?)
If I remember correctly, in "Rip It Up", that was the one contemporary band that Simon Reynolds thought embodied the spirit of post-punk and not just the aesthetic signifiers.

Cool! Thanks for the recommendations!

Looking over a list I made of 2016 favorites, here are some post-punk albums to check out by bands that aren't on your mix:

Warehouse - Super Low
Cold Pumas - The Hanging Valley
Merchandise - A Corpse Wired For Sound
Tyvek - Origin Of What (maybe this is straight up punk)
Lust For Youth - Compassion (maybe this is straight up synthpop)
The City Yelps - Half Hour
Woolen Men - Options ep (actually check out their 2015 LP Temporary Monument - it's great)
Puff Pieces - Bland In D.C.
You Beauty - Jersey Flegg

Tyvek - Fast Metabolism is a classic

cheveu - deer in the headlights

Been listening to these...the Brain playlist has just come on and instantly caught my attention. Reckon this might be The One

OK, My Disco are the best discovery so far

Varsovia immediately afterwards great too. You've buried this stuff deep lol

Imago, I'd say it's too the diversity of this new wave's music that what you're finding to be your favorites would be others' least, and visa versa. It sounds like you should run through Dave Cantrell's eleven "NEXT 20 post-punk bands" lists on Stereo Embers--he tends toward the darker/heavier stuff on those lists. I have the opposite tendency generally, so there's likely a lot of stuff you'd dig that I didn't include...

DJP will be pleased to know that my latest 'whoa what's this it's great!' turned out to be Drab Majesty

So is the existence of all this actually well known and popular and I've just been living under a rock (not unlikely)? Or are most of these bands/this phenomenon still pretty underground? I've searched a lot of these bands on Facebook and their followers range from a few hundred to maybe 25k in a few cases, and it's generally been unpredictable to me who is better/lesser known...

Loads of these are really, really obscure! Hell of a job getting this all together. I mean, I'm totally going to make a Spotify playlist of stuff you excluded :p but this depth of study is pretty astounding

So many great finds - I'm only two mixes through, but so far I'd say The Kurws is my favorite unknown-to-me. So hard to be that skronky but still groovy. So impressively brittle, like a puddle at 31 degrees Fahrenheit.

In 2010, I was in London for the first time since 1989, and getting together with an old friend and collaborator there, we saw Wet Dog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmYJFwfiz_s

...and he commented after the gig, "And if you wait another 20 years to stop by, we' will probably still be able to go out and see band like this."

Some genres go through a curve like this - 3-4 year burst of initial brilliance, a decade fade, then a reconsideration around the 20 year mark as a generation who missed it entirely reassesses and turns the tropes into a sustainable approach. Rockabilly, American primitive guitar, cosmic disco, etc.

Out Hud's Street Dad just kinda blended in to the 2002 post-punk reassessment at the time, but I've been re-listening and it holds up as top flight.

soundlike, it's interesting that you have chromatics here, because i believe they were a total meat n potatoes angular post punk band before they went all synthy

street dad is awesome, still sounds awesome i agree

their early singles are wonderful too

So is the existence of all this actually well known and popular and I've just been living under a rock (not unlikely)? Or are most of these bands/this phenomenon still pretty underground?

A little bit of both I think -- I think it's pretty well known that the genre is still active, but it doesn't strike me as a particularly popular one (with certain artists being exceptions), and as someone who does keep an eye/ear out for this stuff generally but not obsessively it does seem to me that you've dug pretty deep into the underground/unknown. If I've counted correctly it looks like you've included 118 bands and I was familiar with only 51 of those.

I'll have to check my library this weekend but off the top of my head some contemporary bands I've listened to a lot over the past couple of years that might be up your alley:

Cult Club
Tempers
Lower Dens (first two albums more than the somewhat more pop third, though I love that one too)
Belgrado
Froth

I don't necessarily have all of those filed under Post Punk at home but think they'd fit your criteria based on the two hours I've heard of the mixes so far.

this has been enjoyable to go through. nearly finished 'convertible', which is the only one i've really struggled with. guess it isn't my vibe. last lbw seems interesting though!

last one, even

the cold beat song is a decent cover of 'the true wheel' i guessss

So: who am I missing? Can pop music generally and post-punk in particular (arguably a futurist movement) become the basis for traditions? Should they? Is "the zeitgeist" just a way of making novelty the mandatory highest good, or do cultural phenomena in the modern (Modern?) age have sell-by dates?

― Soundslike

i recommend go lim and decorum

Reviewing my 2001-2010 listening, some albums that I really adore, more or less in order of preference

A-Frames - S/T prob. the best known of these. Can still vividly remember the first time I heard "Hostage Crisis".

Veronica Lipgloss and the Evil Eyes - The Witch's Dagger - at the darkwave end, but with a hectoring queerness that keeps it more confrontational than gothic

Antifamily - DIY political collective that totally foresaw the 2008 economic meltdown, really took the principles of Pop Group and Go4 and applied it to contemporary foibles while seizing the laptop means of production

Sex Church - Growing Over - dank cellar wasted shambles akin to Swell Maps and Rowland S Howard

Michael Dracula - In the Red - morphed into Golden Teacher, but more clangy guitar nihilism than the later's worldly explorations

Audionom - Retrospektiv - motorik achievers, but with a new wave yelp to them, particularly on "And You Said I Was The Only One"

Effi Briest - Rhizomes - tracks like "Nights" and "Mirror Rim" wander weirdly but don't let go

Among acts from the last year or two: The Wharves, Flesh World, The Pheromoans, Theoreme

Thanks all for the recommendations!

OK, I've made my own addendum to this (and would encourage others to do similar!)

Link to Spotify

My rules were: none of the old guard (Wire, The Fall and Half Man Half Biscuit are still crushing it), and none of the artists included in Soundslike's playlists. (I broke this latter rule for the best post-punk song of the last decade, because it had to be in here.)

Everything is by my interpretation post-punk, although you may disagree. Some of it's quite high-profile and so I suspect you may have been trying to avoid the obvious? Anyway, tracklist:

The Drones - Private Execution (2016)
Thighpaulsandra - Did He Fall? (2015)
RA - In My Veins (2015)
The Pre New - Janet vs John - The Outcome (2015)
Total Control - Carpet Rash (2011)
KXP - Labyrinth (2010)
Virus - Afield (2016)
These New Puritans - We Want War (2009)
Pinkish Black - Everything Must Go (2015)
Jenny Besetzt - Tender Madness (2016)
The Horrors - Sea Within A Sea (2009)

11 tracks but it's the same length as the other playlists. DRAW YOUR OWN CONCLUSIONS

never listened to the drones before, thanks for the tip, that is a really good album

they're a really good band. they embody the spirit of post-punk even if they're usually seen as fellow travellers (drone-punk? blues-punk? weird noisy indie?). their coterie of opening tracks is astonishing

Here's a spotify list of some of the bands I was talking about, tho' the desired tracks weren't all there. Added a few more

https://open.spotify.com/user/bendybendy/playlist/41EFnVNslArYCpZhR4SUO5

I don't have/use Spotify--do you mind posting artist/tracks as recommendations? Bummer of proprietary formats like Spotify--can't be shared outside the closed system and only have what it allows...

Michael Dracula - In the Red - morphed into Golden Teacher, but more clangy guitar nihilism than the later's worldly explorations

They didn't morph into Golden Teacher. Emily Maclaren who was to all intents and purposes Michael Dracula helped found Glasgow's Green Door studios where Golden Teacher were born and recorded. She is not a member of Golden Teacher.

Ah- thanks - I thought she was playing it Golden Teacher as well.

Listening now. But if I'd allowed myself the whole Noughties then there would have been a few extra things in my playlist. Picking just one Lansing-Dreiden track alone would have been gruelling

(it would have been Disenchanted though obvs)

Thanks for all the recommendations, all. So far, of the ones I hadn't heard, Tyvek, Lust for Youth, The Woolen Men, You Beauty, Wetdog, Cult Club, Lower Dens (the newest album mainly), The Wharves, some of K-X-P's stuff were all really interesting and probably would've been on these mixes if I'd found them.

Imago, it really is interesting and kind of evidence for the breadth-unto-meaninglessness of the term "post-punk" because I think we're basically coming at this new stuff (at least) from opposite ends of the spectrum but still finding some common ground. When it comes to "original" post-punk, I'm guessing you're more of a Joy Division, Savage Republic, Glenn Branca, Crispy Ambulance, Chrome, Section 25, Einsturzende Neubauten, Germs fan? I'm guessing our common ground there would be This Heat, Bauhaus, The Gordons, maybe Pop Group?

two more i'd recommend are

I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness ‎– Fear Is On Our Side
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfG3aAprTZQ&list=PLqqoNZO4oIxKKSi9Q26e3rLPsX5tf_THO
kind of a commercial comsat angels type thing? name is inexcusable i guess

The Legends - Public Radio
there are a few really stunning seventeen seconds/faith style tracks on this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuF3fbyA28Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSWRgx8dATg

(Wow, forgot how insanely good that track is.)

And definitely Lansing-Dreiden. This would probably be my pick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYfTR6ooYpE

Oh wait, that's probably outside the date parameters. Too bad.