The Greatest Post-Punk Bands You Never Heard

"Julia" alone means Asylum Party win this.

DOPE track - totally new to me!

And while I'm here, I'd like to rep more for Rema Rema since nobody seems to be responding to my plug. First record to bear the 4ad logo. Featuring Marco Pirroni before Adam and the Ants, the rest of the band shortly formed Mass, who broke up and gave us Wolfgang Press and Renegade Soundwave (singer Gary Asquith). They had the 1 EP with 4 songs, 2 live and 2 studio, and they are totally amazing. They also have an obscure live track on some old comp tape and a few other live recordings that would occasionally make an appearance on Gary Asquith's myspace page.

Big Black covered them. So did This Mortal Coil. Shouldn't you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWGPcA0eIY8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rdyd_mO9Ptc

I didn't like Nyam Nyam much, but their debut single was really fab. I thought after that they devolved into that sub-Facotry sound far too much and lost their edge and lacked a more distinct sound.

The Rapture were one of the few post-punk revival bands that might have appealed to me back in the day, I always have a good laugh when watching "Misfits" (which uses one of their songs as an intro) at how perfectly they mimic a certain aspect of Public Image circa Metal Box, with a slightly more disco feel, but even (seemingly) paraphrasing the lyrics of "Careering" a bit. But to be honest, a post-punk revivalist band is a dumb idea, dumber even than a Grateful Dead copyist band, since post-punk was far more about individuality than just about any other post-WWII popular music form.

I loved Rema-Rema and was sorry when they disbanded. Marco was also in Cowboys International for a few gigs at least. All the other members did other things (notably Wolfgang Press) but they really would have been remembered as legendary if they'd stuck around and made a real album.

XP I will be forever grateful to Dan for the Ike Yard compilation on Acute. I first heard them when John Peel played "NCR" on his show in the summer of 84, it blew my 15 yr old mind, I played my tape of it over and over again. He also played "Night after night" which I also taped. There was absolutely no information I could find on them at the time, except a small review in the "Trouser Press Record Guide". Four years later Peel played another track from "A fact a second" stating "This sounds more timely than ever" as it was surrounded by acid house. And that was the last time I heard them for years. Web searches didn't generate much hope until I saw the Acute reissue. Ordered it, devoured it, loved it. Thank you.

Your welcome. The recent french vinyl pressing of the Factory LP has spread their sound even further than our CD.

I wasn't interested in post-punk revival bands, though if done well I prefer that to any other kind of revival band. It mostly wasn't done well, but to their credit, even within the most derivative songs they had hooks, and live at the time, they were one of the best bands I'd ever seen. I saw them absolutely destroy every room they played in the year or two up to and around the release of Echoes.

The Rema-Rema cd single was only available off the Beggars/4AD website, which is now closed

"you're welcome" is what that should've read. sorry, it's late.

I lucked out a few years ago and got the Rema Rema 12" off Ebay for something ridiculous like £2.

Not familiar with most of these, I thought I was done with post-punk (I probably overdid it for a bit) but every so often someone points me towards another undiscovered gem. Appreciate the work Fastnbulbous has done here, lots to check out.

I'm voting Josef K.

voted for against natch

The Rema-Rema cd single was only available off the Beggars/4AD website, which is now closed

It's on sale for $1500 on Discogs.com!! The digital version is slightly more affordable.

This is clearly my wheelhouse as post-punk is to me what garage rock is to many others - a genre worth constantly revisiting and digging for gold. So many bands release one great single and then disappeared (cf The Past Seven Days). Most of the bands in this poll can be represented by a single reissue CD:

The Blue Orchids - there are 2 or 3 different compilations which basically have the same tracks. I have "A View From The City". I dig it but it doesn't call to me.
Delta 5 - The "Singles & Sessions" comp is terrific, I'm not sure what sound quality issues there are. I have a rip of the LP and it's ok, but the singles are where it's at. Wonderful stuff.
Desperate Bicycles - Sadly, they won't reissue their stuff.
Diagram Brothers - I discovered "Some Marvels Of Modern Science" a few years back and it blew my mind.
The Embarrassment - the 2 CD retrospective is excellent.
Essential Logic - the 2 CD comp is good if frustratingly incomplete. I have vinyl rips of all Lora's material and it's mindbendingly good.
Fire Engines - I have "Fond" though you all should go buy Dan's reissue on Acute! I prefer Josef K but their best is great.
Glaxo Babies - I've got a number of tracks on compilations but never spring for a comp.
Human Switchboard - Downloaded all their stuff a few years back, good but didn't inspire me.
Josef K - Just picked up the "Crazy To Exist" live CD. I don't pull them out often but they really do scratch a particular itch.
Liliput/Kleenex - 2 CD comp is all kinds of crazy good.
The Lines - Dan's 2 CD reissues are excellent. I dig them when I play them but they don't stick in my brain like others.
Lowlife - There was an excellent retrospective "From A Scream To A Whisper" but I think it's been superceded by a recent LTM comp. I was an early fan of these guys.
Modern Eon - Possibly the single most criminally neglected reissue. If the Scars album can show up on CD (albeit very briefly), "Fiction Tales" can too!
Pauline Murray & The Invisible Girls - I adore Penetration and the first solo album is good though not at the same level. The second solo album never came out on CD.
New Musik - Had "A To Z" years ago. Sold it. Not my thing for some reason.
The Nightingales - "Pissed And Potless" is my favorite comp, I find the albums inconsistent.
Nyam Nyam - Just got the LTM reissue, really good. I can understand the folks who say they lost something after the first single, but not that much.
Opposition - The debut "Breaking The Silence" is on my post-punk top 20, subsequent albums (on CD but way way out of print) are very good as well.
Pylon - I have "Hits" which has its moments but has never made me love it.
Sad Lovers and Giants - Had them, sold them. They felt too derivative of The Chameleons and The Sound.
Scars - "Author Author" was reissued a few years back but is out of print again. Not quite as good as the early singles.
Second Layer - This throws a monkey-wrench for me as it's from Adrian Borland, one of my 3 favorite musicians of all-time. And I think this out-Joy Division's Joy Division. Fantastic, creepy, moody.
The Sleepers - There was a CD that came out in the 90s, live stuff and demos I think. Sold it.
The Stockholm Monsters - Another band where I've got lots of excellent compilation cuts but haven't picked up more.
TV21 - They finally got a reissue a couple of years ago, excellent power-pop but not close to post-punk in my mind.
Virgin Prunes - "If I Die, I Die" is a fabulous record, with Colin Newman's fingerprints all over it. A singular vision for sure.
Wah! - The debut "Nah Poo = The Art Of Bluff" is all kinds of crazy good, taking the best bits of early Teardrops and Echo and fusing them with Pete Wylie's over-the-top vocals. There's a great 2 CD anthology as well.
The Wake - I recently sold the stuff I had, they just never clicked for me.
Y Pants - There was a CD that came out about 10 years ago. Sold it.

These types of polls are hard, it's like thinking about sports Hall Of Fame questions: do you look at the absolute peak performance, or the career-spanning achievements? Since most of these bands put out one or two albums, I suppose peak performance determines the winner. In that case, I have to go with Opposition.

LinesJosefKFireEngines

Word on the street is there's some more Glaxo Babies reissues coming on vinyl.

Gerald, spend more time with the Lines, I don't know anyone who hasn't eventually gotten hooked, it just stakes a while.

My favorite song that Joy Division never wrote is "Into the Garden" by Artery.

It's on sale for $1500 on Discogs.com!! The digital version is slightly more affordable.

Blimey, it recently sold for £63 on ebay

crustaceanrebel, I'm not going to beat a dead horse on The Individuals; I loved them, you don't. Just curious when you say they were "far too hugely influenced by a single band" what band that was? Trouser Press said Cure and Gang of Four, neither of which I get tbh, and the Db's, which I do. The guitar interplay is a bit Television to me in spots, the rhythm section a little bit Talking Heads. I kind of lump them with bands like Let's Active, but they don't really jangle (and Individuals records actually came out first.)

Loving this thread by the way, tons of stuff I've heard of but not heard.

My vote goes to The Human Switchboard.

I know you're busy and have lots of things to occupy your time, but it would be great if you took 8 minutes and 8 seconds to listen to their Stairway To Heaven, Refrigerator Door.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tfAG-52xt8

Not sure why the link didn't show up. Try clicking here

Bar/None Records just put out a Human Switchboard Comp. Good Stuff

God bless Acute. Hope yall get another chance to release that expanded (or "even" the original) Wanna Buy A Bridge?, Dan.
Really like 2012's Fac Dance 02--was afraid there would be too many Joy D/New O wannabees, but it went much further than expected--didn't know Factory was involved with rai, for instance. This review is too tough on some tracks, but I certainly agree with favorable mentions of ESG, A Certain Ratio (in the years covered by this comp) and others. Don't know if all the streams still work, but as a Comments guy points out, it's also on Spotify (although I'm not gonna set up housekeeping with Fecebook just to get into Spotify--not just yet)
http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=11667

Thanks dow.

The Wanna Buy a Bridge was a pipe-dream from a long time ago. The difficulty of dealing with major labels for licensing a few key tracks (WBAB without We Are All Prostitutes?), the issues of licensing a comp from so many different people, and finally the passing of Nikki Sudden all made it slip through our fingers. I've told this story probably too many times, but I met NIkki the night he died in New York and he was excited to help me with the liner notes and put me in touch with Gina Birch.

For what it was worth, here's how I envisioned it. A CD release of Wanna Buy a Bridge with a set of bonus tracks culled from other early RT releases. The tracklisting would've been:

The original LP:
1. Delta 5 - Mind Your Own Business
2. The Slits - Man Next Door
3. Essential Logic -Aerosol Burns
4. Television Personalities - Part Time Punks
5. Swell Maps - Read About Seymour
6. The Pop Group - We Are All Prostitutes
7. Spizzenergi - Soldier Soldier
8. Liliput - Aint You
9. Cabaret Voltaire - Nag Nag Nag
10. Young Marble Giants - Final Day
11. Scritti Politti - Skank Bloc Bologna
12. Robert Wyatt - At Last I Am Free

CD bonus tracks:
13. Subway Sect - Ambition
14. The Nightingales - Idiot Strength
15. The Monochrome Set - He's Frank
16. The Red Krayola - Born in Flames
17. Cult Figures - Zip Nolan
18. Blue Orchids - Work
19. Missing Scientists - Big City, Bright Lights
20. David Gamson - Sugar, Sugar
21. The Gist - This is Love
22. Epic Soundtracks - Jelly, Babies

It flows really great, so feel free to buy all those songs individually and make a CD-length playlist of them.

Another idea I had was to JUST use the bonus tracks and call it Wanna Buy a Bridge 2, a nice compilation of more Rough Trade stuff, though there are a lot of great Rough Trade comps, like this italian one that I own:

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Cross-Current/release/593442

and this japanese one:

http://www.discogs.com/Various-Clear-Cut/release/593437

Not the bonus tracks end with a Robert Wyatt vocal, just like the original.

OK I totally had good intentions to listen to more of these guys before the poll ended but I've just ended up listening to Lives of Angels on repeat all yesterday evening and this evening.

Damn, this is good! Thanks to NickB and everyone on the other post-punk thread for saying the magic words that got me listening. So I guess that's going to be my vote, anyway.

One vote for The Embos.

Now , where the fuck is my' retrospective' cd eh? Which great mate did I lend it to all those years ago?
I need it now, 'pal'

Afterthought. No, I have that tape somewhere - it's the double cd I'm missing

xp Nice rundown, thanks Gerald!

It may have been crustacean who inspired me to get all four Spherical Objects reissues a few years back. I really wanted to like 'em, but cannot get past the excruciating vocals. You'd think if I could take David Thomas I could handle anything. Listening to Steve Miro and not clicking yet. I do really like the Rema Rema EP, great noisy stuff. If there were other unreleased recordings I'd expect to see it on Acute someday!

I can almost, but not quite appreciate someone who was lucky enough to experience the original post-punk era firsthand not wanting anything to do with later so-called "revival" stuff. I'm really liking the recent releases from Merchandise, Deep Time, Big Joan, Pins, Savages, New War and Talk Normal. Like most bands, they just pick and choose elements from many sources they like and aren't necessarily revivalists. To say they're not worth bothering with because PiL or Joy Division were more original is like saying the Stones and many other great rock bands aren't worth bothering with because Chuck Berry did it first. For a while back in 2000 my favorite band was The Fire Show, who were based in Chicago so I actually got to see them live several times. They were brilliant, and I was bummed when they split (M. Resplendent moved to Europe), and I always have a gaping hole in my live show schedule for great post-punk inspired bands. I could easily have expanded this poll beyond the 80s but there were already more bands than I could fit. The mention of my exclusion of The Rapture upthread was just an oversight -- I must have forgotten to give them the "post-punk" tag in my database.

I have both Lines CDs and have been enjoying re-listening to 'em. Right now I'm listening to a playlist called "electro-glam" made up mostly of early stuff from Ultravox, Tubeway Army and Japan. Maybe I should promote it as a sub-genre to irritate certain people :)

I've just ended up listening to Lives of Angels on repeat all yesterday evening and this evening.

Glad you liked it!

Dan - thanks for that excellent expabded Bridge, I am going to compile that immediately!

Is it just me or has the crush of great post-punk comps ended? In the 00s it felt like there were many great ones every year, covering scenes all around the globe. But the last few years has seen a dearth of them. Even the Messthetics series has slowed to a crawl.

hey what about Five or Six?

Oh boy, LOVE Portrait, which I knew from Pillows and Prayers, and Another Reason, which I think maybe was on Seeds Electronic? Then I got the LP A Thriving and Happy Land which is really wonderful if a bit all over the place. Kind of the post-Syd/pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd era of Post-Punk. There's a 12 minute song called "Consider This" that's just beautiful. Then when Cherry Red finally did an Five or Six collection, I was surprised none of Thriving was on it. Really don't know much about them as a band. I see I have another track, The Building Kind, from a Where to Now? compilation (UK post-punkish club night). But that track's not on the Cherry Red Best of.

Certainly if they had an album's worth of "Portrait" they'd be talked about as a key proto-jangle band w/ Orange Juice, Monochrome Set etc.

my friend put out an LP & CD of Irish Post-Punk, DIY and Electronic Music 1980-1983 last year. got good reviews from RA & FACT so might be more electronic than post-punk in appeal but here it is anyway
http://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/discog_cache03.html

http://www.factmag.com/2012/11/30/the-40-best-reissues-of-2012/27/
http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=11312

dan--re Five or Six--their Polar Exposure mini-lp is great; a-side produced by Kevin Coyne. very mysterious band.

Is that stuff that's on the Cherry Red CD?

looks like the track Polar Exposure and two from the other side are on the Cherry Red comp.

Proto-jangle! If this poll spawns/popularizes even more sub-genre names, that would be excellent! And if someone could shoot a documentary called "Jangle," even better, though some may confuse it with Django.

There is/was a documentary in the works called "The Sound of Young Scotland" but I don't know what happened to it. Your basic Postcard/Fire Engines etc story.

xpost Yeah, that Irish post-punk comp was good if a bit inconsistent (as these things tend to be). Very glad to have it, it was my sole comp bought last year!

The fact that there's bands mentioned in this thread for whom I have no tracks on compilations indicates there's still room for more archival releases.

Check out the Instant Pop Classics bootlegs. Turned me onto Desperate Bicycles.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Random thoughts at 11 pm...

Far worse things than the Modern Eon LP have seen the light of day recently. There'd be a nice cd of that with the singles and the comp tracks. I'm rather fond of the Street to Street vol. 1 track. Sounds rougher, and earlier, than the LP. Not a bad thing—not every moment is all breathless importance.

That Scars cd was, to my ears, a travesty. Somebody may have won the loudness wars on that one. And not being able to include one of the all-time post-punk greats, "Adult/ery," is rough. There's some talk of another attempt by these folks: https://www.facebook.com/scaredtogethappy?fref=ts

Exposing the Individuals to a list that includes Josef K, Liliput, and the Lines is almost actionably cruel.

And I've had this Systematics song on the brain of late. Can be found on the M-Squared box set.

Decent stand-in for all its ignored Aussie brethren. Title is wrong on YouTube. Should be "International Voltage."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvZGCrtOt24

And my Australian fave, though here the high end (amongst other registers) has been excised by shoddy transferring, so all the proto-jungle skittering of the drum machine has to be imagined. Wollongong, 1983. Second of two albums (if we're trying to satisfy the LP quotient mentioned above), which came after three singles and some cassette stuff. 250 copies....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYRdsf79E2E

yeah that's my favourite systematics too xpost

that sunday painters song is cool, i haven't heard that one before

I wish the YouTube version sounded better. So much missing. Though the crappy-stylus crunchy distortion has its points, too.

Oh, and to close the circle, the Sunday Painters' 15-minute "Rema-Rema" cover from their live, early '82 cassette (Any Port in a Storm, is a great thing. Beat This Mortal Coil and Albini to the punch.

You sure know a lot about The Sunday Painters!

I never really got into Modern Eon. A friend who I think now runs SXSW or something tried to pitch me on doing a reissue. Don't know if knew them or had a connection or just thought I should do it. He burned me a CD-R, back when that's what you'd do. I liked it but didn't really get into it.

I did a playlist of Joy Division-influenced/likeminded grey raincoat post-punk stuff that I called Nightshift. This is the tracklisting:

Artery-Into the Garden
Dance Chapter-New Dance
The Associates-Amused as Always
The Cure-A Forest
Section 25-Friendly Fires
The Gist-Dark Shots
Comsat Angels-Independence Day
The Wild Swans-Revolutionary Spirit
Wah! Heat-Better Scream
2.3-Where to Now?
Article 58-Echoes
23 Skidoo-Another Baby's Face
The Sound-Night Versus Day
Nocturnal Projections-You'll Never Know
The Durutti Column-Spent Time
New Order-Ceremony
U2-Gloria
Garage Class-Terminal Tokyo
Josef K-It's Kinda Funny
Gardez Darkz-Winter Scene
Modern Eon-Child's Play
The Names-Nightshift
Stockholm Monsters-Death is Slowly Coming
The Wake-Favour

Dan - I just put the finishing touches on your expanded Bridge comp. Did you leave off the SLF and Raincoats tracks intentionally?

No. You know that probably happened? I made the playlist, and sometime since then, deleted those files and replaced them with different versions, or just didn't have them and forgot to put them in the playlist. Or I had removed the SLF already because I knew it'd be a licensing issue. The Raincoats I don't know what happend.

So you found David Gamson and Missing Scientists?

Oh I should mention regarding Acute's 2 Lines CDs that although thanking and credits were minimal, ILX poster Michael Train was a part of that. I had all the 7"s but couldn't find Cool Snap. Michael burned me a CD-R with the cover artwork being Cool Snap and a few of the singles (though I think you were missing one? Maybe House of Cracks?). It basically looked just like Memory Span, which makes sense because that looks just like Cool Snap. Anyway I never owned Cool Snap until well after the first Lines CD came out and my friend Joseph Colbourne, a disco DJ in boston, was in NY and had a copy and I told him that he had to sell it to me because it was ridiculous that I didn't own a copy of Cool Snap, and he was generally selling off post-punk singles to buy more disco singles, so everyone came out on top.

Yup, I found Gamson on a blog and Missing Scientists on slsk. Everything else I had one place or another. I'll spin it tomorrow but I know it'll be great as I love most of it already. Boy, I sure wish Rough Trade put together a giant singles box set like Cherry Red did a few years back.