POX Post-Punk Albums

talking heads.

Simple Minds - Reel To Real Cacophony
The Comsat Angels - Sleep No More
Talking Heads - Remain In Light
OMD - Architecture & Morality
The Slits - Cut
P.I.L. - Second Edition
Joy Division - Closer
Wire - 154
The Cure - Seventeen Seconds
The Teardrop Explodes - Everybody Wants To Shag...

... with The Associates' Fourth Draw Down on the bench.

(11. Dare - The Human League
12. Bummed - Happy Mondays
13. They Were Wrong, So We Drowned - Liars)

Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth
The Raincoats - The Raincoats
The Swell Maps - Jane From Occupied Europe
The Laughing Clowns - History of Rock & Roll Volume 1
Orange Juice - You Can't Hide Your Love Forever
Cabaret Voltaire - The Original Sound of Sheffield '78/'82
The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms
Birthday Party - Prayers On Fire
The Fall - Dragnet
Television Personalities - ...And Don't the Kids Just Love It

1.Minutemen, My First Bells 1980-83 (just edges out Double Nickels)
2.Public Image Ltd., Second Edition
3.Butthole Surfers, Psychic...Powerless...Another Man's Sac
4.The Soft Boys, 1976-81
5.The Fall, Hex Enduction Hour
6.Von Lmo, Future Language
7.My Bloody Valentine, Feed Me With Your Kiss EP
8.Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation
9.Trumans Water, Spasm Smash XXXOXOX Ox And Ass
And, just for Alex...

10.Killing Joke

1) The Comsat Angels - Sleep No More
2) 23 Skidoo - Seven Songs
3) The Au Pairs - Sense and Sensuality
4) Simple Minds - Empires and Dance
5) Lizzy Mercier Descloux - Mambo Nassau
6) The Pop Group - Y
7) Gang of Four - Solid Gold
8) Public Image Limited - Metal Box
9) Associates - Fourth Drawer Down
10) Mission of Burma - Vs.

Raincoats are UK. Rough Trade dour Marxist brigade innit (TM Woebot)

1. Swell Maps - in 'Jane From Occupied Europe'
2. The Raincoats - Odyshape
3, Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth
4. The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour
5. Cabaret Voltaire - The Voice of America
6. Public Image Ltd - Metal Box
7. The Slits - Cut
8. The Laughing Clowns - Mr Uddich-Schmuddich Goes to Town
9. The Homosexuals - The Homosexuals Record
10. Wire - Chairs Missing
11. Pere Ubu - Dub Housing
12. Primitive Calculators - Primitive Calculators/
The Slugfuckers - Transformational Salt (I can't decide)

(Couldn't keep it to 10, sorry.)

All off the top of my head, missing tonnes of records etc.. A list of post-punk singles would maybe be more illuminating. Surely two great 'post-punk albums that never will be' would be singles collections for Scritti Politti (first 3 EPs) and Desperate Bicycles (with the album too...)

I don't tend to see Television, Talking Heads etc. as 'post-punk' particularly; I guess it depends on if you're speaking post-punk as a chronological definiton, or post-punk as an aesthetical/political definition.

1. Killing Joke by Killing Joke
2. What's THIS for... by Killing Joke
3. Entertainment by Gang of Four
4. Garlands by the Cocteau Twins
6. Y by the Pop Group
7. Junkyard by the Birthday Party
8. First Issue by Public Image Ltd.
9. Closer by Joy Division
10. Another Day, Another Dollar e.p. by Gang of Four

To be wildly re-visiited and radically re-written later.

Jon Dale is very very wise.

I'd substitute 'cut' for the last record the slits made and gang of four's first record with their peel sessions.

This Heat - Deceit
Tuxedo Moon - Half Mute
Gang of Four - Entertainment
Wire - 154
Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats
PIL - Second Edition
Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Ian Dury - New Boots and Panties
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
23 Skidoo - Seven Songs
Suicide - s/t
The Slits - Cut
Chrome - Half Machine Lip Moves/Alien Soundtracks

Nice!

stretching it a bit to keep things nz and down under (tall dwarfs: not really post-punk; renderers: released in '98. both so good i couldn't help it).

Nice to see some love for The Pin Group, too. I'm really of fond of the "Coat" b/w "Jim" single.

I can't seem to get into The Raincoats...the music's great but the voices sound completely gruesome. David Thomas of Pere Ubu sounds like Aretha Franklin in comparison. If I told you what I compare them (the girls' voices in The Raincoats) to in my head, you'd find me sick or you'd hate me, so I won't say.

10.Killing Joke

By the way, I didn't want this to go unnoticed, and let me just say in response...

YEAH, YEAH, FUCKIN' YEAH! YEAH AGAIN, MOTHERFUCKIN' MOTHERFUCKERS!

Eep, I almost forgot...if Rough Trade's old output is owned by One Little Indian, then maybe we should collectively hassle OLI for some vintage Scritti.

camberwell now - the ghost trade
trisomie 21 - passions divisées (and the 2nd LP, since they're combined on disc)
george harasment - masai sleep walking
sad lovers & giants - feeding the flame
dif juz - who says so?
colin newman - a-z
:zoviet*france: - mohnomische
minimal compact - deadly weapons
cabaret voltaire - red mecca
cindytalk - in this world

I kiss you. They are my third favorite band of all time ever.

Here's my list
of
POST PUNK ALBUMS:

1. Gang Of Four - Entertainment
2. PIL - First Issue
3. PIL - Metal Box [Second Edition]
4. New Order - Movement
5. Comsat Angels - Sleep No More
6. Is Cocteau Twins "Treasure" too late to be called Post Punk?
7. The Fall - Dragnet
8. why can't we include New Order 12"es?
9. Stranglers - La Folie
10. I'm sorry Alex, but Night Time is too late to be called Post Punk isn't it?

the fall - slates
pil - first issue
pil - second edition/metal box
raincoats - s/t
gang of four - entertainment!
pere ubu - dub housing
wire - chairs missing
slits - cut
the fall - slates
the fall - slates

Dan, what do you think about "the scale of ten"?.

i love at leat half of the songs...but its so slick.

* What do you mean “that’s cheating”?

PiL – Metal Box (aka Second Edition)
Raincoats – 1st s/t
Red Noise – Red Noise
Residents – Duckstab / Buster & Glen
Siouxsie & The Banshees – The Scream
Slits – Cut
Suicide – 1st s/t
Talking Heads – Remain In Light
Wire – Pink Flag
XTC – White Music

(Now THAT is cheating.)

Hmmm... I guess I like my post-punk on the darker side... I'll add Blondie's Parallel Lines to brighten things up a bit.

ah, not really, just being funny.

but it's close.

mattp's NZ list above left of the Nocturnal Projections...

1. Laughing Clowns - Mr Uddich-Schmuddich Goes to Town
2. Primitive Calculators - Primitive Calculators
3. Slugfuckers - aw, hell, everything
4. Essendon Airport - Sonic Investigations of the Trivial
5. V/A - Can't Stop It
6. Makers of the Dead Travel Fast - Tael of a Seaghors
7. Holy Ghosts - anything/everything
8. Four Gods/Go-Betweens/Apartments 7"'s on Able Label
9. Voigt/465 - Red Lock on Sea Steel
10. those Innocent label NEW MUSIC compilations

Damn, we did have some great post-punk eh. Dan Selzer is right, we DO come close...

okay i think i can put my first three in order but past that, i don't know what's going on. also i really don't think anything that is too dancy, rocking, jazzy, funky or american counts. like sonic youth or the contortions or swans or the flying lizards or any new order after power, corruption and lies; or television or the talking heads.

then again i don't really know what post-punk means.

hehe my top three are all super gothic albums.

1. pornography by the cure.

2. juju by siouxsie and the banshees.

3. the sky's gone out by bauhaus. this could very easily be replaced with in the flat field, burning from the inside, or go away white; basically, this one wins because i listened to it last.

4. public image ltd. - first issue. is this the first post-punk album? i think in all the music that i've listened to that has all the sounds that i associate with post-punk (which is pretty well-defined by this list), this is the earliest example? oh no i just double checked, magazine came out eight months earlier. also the scream by siouxsie came out a month earlier but it's just a punk album.

i guess it's obvious that post-punk would be defined by dudes who were in punk bands.

i really want to put pink flag by wire, but it's too obviously punk; it sounds just like any other 70s british punk band, like the sex pistols or the buzzcocks, and i haven't listened to any of their other albums (besides a bell is a cup which fucking sucks and i don't want to talk about)

5. unknown pleasures by joy division, of course and obviously. nothing sounds as definitive as this album, it's amazing.

6. entertainment! by gang of four, i haven't listened to this nearly as much as any of these other albums, but i quite enjoyed it.

7. real life / magazine.

8. power, corruption and lies; it's the first album where they sound like an actually new band, and it's SO GODDAMN BADASS.

9. christian death, only theatre of pain; i listened to this again yesterday, it's so gothic, and well put together. it beats bauhaus at being dark, but not pornography.

10. a killing joke album goes here. either killing joke [1980] or what's THIS for...! (which gets the prize for best post-punk album name i think).

okay that's it.

without bringing up endless discussions of just what IS post-punk and what else could count, I'd like to mention that Real Life by Magazine came out in April 78 while First Issue was December.

all these posts and not a SINGLE mention of Interpol or Bloc Party's first record O_O

lol

Ten that haven't been mentioned yet but are worthy of note:

Art Objects - Bagpipe Music
Diagram Brothers - Some Marvels Of Modern Science
Modern Eon - Fiction Tales
Monochrome Set - Strange Boutique
Opposition - Breaking The Silence
Scientists - Blood Red River
Second Layer - World Of Rubber
Shriekback - Care
Virgin Prunes - If I Die, I Die...
Wah! - Nah=Poo: The Art Of Bluff

Artists whose post-punkness I'm confused about: John Foxx / Rich Kids / Penetration / The Only Ones / later Damned / Japan / The The / Violent Femmes / Skids

Most people seem to agree on stuff like Metal Box, Hex, Closer, Juju
I'd like to add:
The Blue Orchids - the Greatest Hit
Vic Godard and Subway Sect - A Retrospective

The Blue Orchids - the Greatest Hit

Hah! I pulled that off my list in order to reduce it to 10. Also agree that Vic Godard is a wayward genius, pity the outstanding "20 Odd Years" compilation is way out of print. Allegedly, Motion Records is preparing a "30 Odd Years" to replace it - we'll see.

I haven't heard the 20 or 30 odd years yet. The Retrospective came out around 83, so it seems very postpunk to me. Peel played Don't Split It, and I was mesmerised. It still has that effect

20 Odd Years went out of print and they lost the artwork or masters or something held it up for ages.

...seems to me something that came out in April of '78 is "During-punk" as opposed to "Post-punk." Unless you're saying 'post-punk' begins where the Beginning ['76 - '77] ends.

for some time now post-punk has been as much defined as a "sound" rather then a time, which is why stuff like Television, Talking Heads, Pere Ubu etc often get grouped in with post-punk. On the surface, this doesn't make any sense, but if you dig into it, there is a logic to it.

In my mind, I define post-punk as music that was inspired by the energy and excitement of punk, but involved a wider range of influences and experimentation, and this can include bands that started out more conventionally punk but quickly developed into something else, like Joy Division, (or PiL and Magazine in a sense) or bands that already were clearly mentally coming from somewhere else, like the Fall. However, it also precludes the inclusion of anything that sounds like what we've come to understand as the conventional "77-era" punk, so while at the time, "punk" may have meant Sex Pistols and Wire, as "punk" has been refined and defined to mean a more specific thing, it's easy to use a term like "post-punk" for Wire.

In america at least, there was initially that debate "this is punk, that is new wave", and if you take the "new wave" artists you could probably just grab some simple defining characteristics and split them futher, "this is punk" "this is post-punk" this is "new wave". Or you could say it's all punk, it's all new wave, but you wouldn't say that about post-punk.

So if you use post-punk to define music that is tangentially related to the punk explosion but growing out of it, you can also use the term to to describe bands that pre-dated punk, who were helped by the punk explosion, and how continued growing with it. So you could put on a Pere Ubu song from 1975 and say "this is post-punk" and only the most didactic type will argue with you.

BUT what about the Damned? What about the Clash? While there was Oi and there was pop-punk and everything else, it's probably more a question of what the influences were. Punk bands learning how to play and writing more elaborate songs and getting poppier is not Post-Punk, no matter how good it is (and I LOVE The Black Album and Strawberries, but it's just rock-n-roll). But were the Clash just rock-n-roll? If you define post-punk by the new influences being injected, which were generally funk and disco and dub, krautrock and experimental music etc, then there's something post-punky about some of the Clash's hip-hop stuff, but at the same time, that's later on.

I'd say after 82 all bets are off. By then all the bands were either shooting for the charts or digging some kind of experimental hole, in both cases for better or worse. The only bands that can be easily called "post-punk" after 82 I would say are the Fall and the Nightingales, followed by the Ron Johnson band, then later by all the music that would take influence from the sound of post-punk, because if they took influence from the methods of post-punk, they wouldn't sound anything like post-punk.

So yeah, I have no problem called pre-punk band post-punk! And of course for a lot of people punk was over by 78 anyway.

anyway, that's how I see some of these things. It's a slow day at work here.

1.Associates-Sulk/Fourth Draw Down/The Affectionate Punch
2.Pere Ubu-Dub Housing
3.Klaus Nomi-Klaus Nomi
4.Elvis Costello-This Years Model
5.Lene Lovich-Flex
6.The B-52's-The B-52's
7.Orange Juice-You Can't Hide Your love Forever
8.Magazine-The Correct Use of Soap
9.Bow Wow Wow-See Jungle...
10.Sparks-Angst in my Pants

marc iv listen to 'chairs missing' and '154' by wire ASAP FFS

oh yeah, seriously! And I think you'll listen to Pink Flag with different ears after hearing Chairs Missing and 154.

okay i'm listening to 'chairs missing' now; i predict that i'll be ready to move on to '154' in like two more days or so of listening to this album. i started listening to it after writing my post a couple days ago, but i feel like i did so prematurely. i just wasn't over pink flag yet, you know?

regardless of that, it is fucking incredible. i guess i'm going to have to knock gang of four off of my list and replace it with this because, dan, despite your eloquent post (most of which makes total sense to me), i am not ready to label pink flag as post-punk. it's too simple; it's just too goddamn punk!

right now i'm listening to the last track on the reissue, 'former airline.' you (dan) are totally otm about a large part of what post-punk is, is the influence of the music they were listening to. pink flag sounds like it came from their SOULS, but for chairs missing i imagine that they were affected by something, and the sound evolved accordingly.

man wire is such a good band i can't believe it. enough about them though.

If you ever hear the stuff that predated Pink Flag, that is certainly punk. Of course Pink Flag is as well, but it's also sorta meta-punk. More than any other punk band at the time, they knew what it was, they were playing with it. Commenting on it. Twisting it around. Using it for different ends then everyone else. They were also older.

otm.

Few surprises on my POX:

Gang of Four - Entertainment
Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
Public Image Ltd. - Metal Box/Second Edition
Wire - 154
23 Skidoo - The Gospel Comes to New Guinea
Birthday Party - Prayers on Fire
Killing Joke - What's THIS for...!
Siouxsie & the Banshees - Juju
Kükl - The Eye
Chameleons - Script of the Bridge

1. Faith - The Cure
2. 17 Seconds - The Cure
3. The Correct Use Of Soap - Magazine
4. Systems Of Romance - Ultravox!
5. Real Life - Magazine
6. Three Imaginary Boys - The Cure
7. Black And White - The Stranglers
8. 154 - Wire
9. Ultravox! - Ultravox!
10.Chairs Missing - Wire

I chose not to include "Heroes", but one might make a case for it being post-punk, in which case it belongs way on top of this list.

Oh, and, I chose a rather narrow definition. Had I been listing post-77/78 new wave in general, like Kitchen Person does upthread, my list would have looked completely different, a lot of Elvis Costello and The Jam in there for starters.

dan i really like your characterization of wire (esp. pink flag era) as meta-punk. i think in a lot of ways post-punk is actually a kind of meta-punk in that the bands became more self-aware of their sound and song forms.

i've long thought of "sand in my joints" off CM as the quintessential meta-punk song. the song is pretty much paint-by-numbers punk rock with the "shit's not right and i'm pissed" lyrics replaced by the absurd and meaningless "i've got sand in my joints".

wire was very clever and humorous in their deconstruction of punk music right from the start and that's what i think makes them so special

oh and the way they just nonchalantly throw the CATCHIEST SONGS EVER in the middle of their albums (mannequin, outdoor miner, map ref)

yeah, I have the great Wire Play Pop EP comp they put out a few years later, I think it has Outdoor Miner, I am the Fly, Lowdown, Dot-Dash, Mannequin, Map Ref, 12XU.

Mannequin
I am the Fly
Dot Dash
Outdoor Miner
A Question of Degree
Map Reference 41°N 93°W

I really can't think of a better run of singles, especially at the beginning of a bands career.

8. 154 - Wire

Cannot believe Geir would set foot near this one.

no particular order:

The Birthday Party - EVERYTHING THEY EVER DID
The Cure - Seventeen Seconds/Faith/Pornography
Magazine - Real Life
Swell Maps - Jane From Occupied Europe
Killing Joke - Killing Joke
Siouxsie - The Scream
The Pop Group - y
Young Marble Giants - Colossal Youth
DAF - Alles Ist Gut
The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour

I could go on. Pretty much my favorite era of music.

I still haven't answered this. Firstly, it is obviously among my favorite eras. But I guess in some ways, I don't think of lots of albums being perfect. Maybe I think of it as a singles era. Or maybe I've just made so many compilations and playlists of my own that it's really hard. But can I really chose between Unknown Pleasures or Closer. Especially when I'd probably rather say Substance, even though it's not a real album? Or Hex Enduction Hour and Perverted By Language? Though I guess Hex is more classically "post-punk", being the right time-frame, and Perverted is a bit more experimental and odd.

although if you include the accompanying singles, I think the Wonderful and Frightening World of The Fall is my favorite Fall album.

1. Talking Heads - Remain In Light
2. The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms
3. The Residents - Duck Stab/Buster & Glen
4. Wire - Chairs Missing
5. The Teardrop Explodes - Kilimanjaro
6. The Cure - Faith
7. The Raincoats - Odyshape
8. This Heat - Deceit
9. Marine Girls - Lazy Ways
10. Public Image Ltd. - Metal Box (or maybe Flowers Of Romance, can't decide)

9. Marine Girls - Lazy Ways

i think the 'punk' in post-punk still needs to be considered. i listened to marine girls' albums; they're great, but devoid of any punk attitude and/or sound.

i think the 'punk' in post-punk still needs to be considered. i listened to marine girls' albums; they're great, but devoid of any punk attitude and/or sound.

"Post" means "after," so "postpunk" simply means "after punk." (Think about terms like "postwar" or "post-apocalypse." That thing in the second part of the word already occurred. It doesn't have to still be there.)

So the real question about the Marine Girls is whether they were largely / primarily informed by punk - and the answer to that is obvious. They started off with DIY releases, covered a Buzzcocks tune, were a part of the independent label explossion (Whaam!, Cherry Red) and played primarily with other postpunk artists, Stuart Moxham from Young Marble Giants produced one of their records. They talked about the importance of punk in their idea to form a band. They tackled subjects like love and other subjects in a way that punk helped make possible. They didn't sound punk particularly, but the evolution of punk into postpunk allowed for all sorts of sounds - the Young Marble Giants didn't sound "punk." The Raincoats "Odyshape" is far from it. Vic Godard's lounge sound was entirely postpunk even as it eschewed nearly every punk convention. There are a thousand more examples.

Pop Group - Y
PIL - Metal Box
Raincoats - S/T
Virgin Prunes - New Form Of Beauty 1-4
Slits - Peel Sessions
The Fall - Hex Enduction Hour
Gang Of Four - Songs Of The Free
The Clash - Sandinista!
Throbbing Gristle - DOA
Talking Heads - Fear Of Music