The Greatest Post-Punk Bands You Never Heard

Virgin Prunes has to be one of the better known acts on this list. I've kind of forgotten what they sound like, however.

boycotting because no scientists

"you never heard" say you wrote something, presuming your audience never heard any of 'em so you're telling 'em now. Fine, but since can only vote for one, voted for Essential Logic just because they're alphabetically ahead of my other faves on here, Human Switchboard, Kleenex Liliput, and Pylon. Prob Delta 5 and some others as well, but I'm most familiar with the aforementioned groups, thanks to excellent, extensive reissues. Perfect Sound Forever's Jason Gross instigated both the EL and KL comps, plus the Delta 5 I haven't heard. All of these bands occasionally veer into arty blurs, but most of the time they cut a sharp set of (frequently female) profiles.

Would have been a tossup between Scientists and Desperate Bicycles, but
Pylon were pretty well-mentioned at least during the Athens Inside/Out era. I vaguely recall not especially disliking them.

The Pylon reissues are great, got all the singles-only added. too. Oh yeah, and those Individuals reissues a few years back were mostly better for their bonus tracks; "Fields" is still my fave track, Janet Wygal wailing from the trail, "I walk by your house"--amen, sister!

The Ike Yard collection is awesome too.

Just got a live set with Blue Orchids backing Nico in '82 from Dime last week. Sounds like a good set but I'm not sure how great the sound is.

Please, please: go listen to Feeding the Flame by Sad Lovers & Giants!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSK1lYHH_Ks

Yeah, part of the point of this is to encourage people to hear some of these bands for the first time before voting. Some can't be bothered which is fine. But it's 2013, so anyone who's interested and motivated should have easy access to any and all the bands.

On New Musik's From A to B (Straight Lines) (1980), they seemed to me just as much Factory/Joy Division acolytes as new wave synth poppers, but I probably shouldn't have included them, oh well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mTX83ekglM&feature=youtu.be

There's something about the Desperate Bicycles' "Smokescreen" that touches an Anglophiliac nerve like nothing else from the period. You have to go back to the '60s.

THere was also a Delta 5 live set upped to Dime earlier today. Been several post-punk things from around '82 put up over the last couple of days.

the answer to any poll with pylon is pylon

Now that I think about it more - obviously, there's '70s/'80s Anglophilia as well. But "Smokescreen" is like skiffle or something. It's also the song that makes me think, "This is the punk band who could write songs as good as Neil Innes or someone."

the wake aren't the greatest of all time or anything but they're basically the original wild nothing

My knowledge of this list is spotty at best but Josef K's Sorry For Laughing is great. Someone here alerted me to New Musik's '24 hours from culture' as a proto house tune. Sounds like a Nu Groove b-side.. Will check some more out of this list.. great thread.

it was new musik that had a hit in the uk with living by numbers right? thats the only song of theirs i think i've ever heard, so in my head they're in the same sort of slightly wacky synthpop ballpark as landscape, and even maybe m or the buggles

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

lives of angels came up on a similar thread the other day and they turned out to be a nice find. reminded me a bit of the clean or the bats or someone in places but with a nice android drum machine sound going on too

I picked up the digital release of the newish Ike Yard remix 12" featuring Regis and Monoton the other week but had never knowingly heard Ike Yard themselves until tonight. Pretty neat minimal electronic stuff, right up my alley. Thank you thread!

ike yard are a weird band and it boggles me a bit that they were putting out stuff thy did way back when

Man, need to hear more of these! The ones I have heard--Pylon, Josef K, Human Switchboard, Fire Engines, Section 25--are pretty rad

ctrl-f "wipers"

[not found]

:-(

are the wipers more well-known then pylon?

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

I don't want to hijack the thread with more on New Musik but Nick is right in classing them alongside Buggles and M as studio boffins making proto-synth pop, a very 1979-80 thing to do. Certainly they are the only band on this list who I knew of at the time (I was 11 in 1980 and have a distinct memory of seeing them play "Luxury" on "Swapshop"). I'm sure there's an old thread about them on ILM, I can remember myself and Harvey Williams raving about them. Enough about them from me.

Three Wipers albums made the most recent ILM 80s poll so I figured they're pretty well known at least in these parts.

Wipers are definitely well-known. I haven't heard Pylon, I don't think - did they have standing over here or is it more of a US cult following?

ive heard 10 of these

fire engines / theoretical girls were of the first rank of post-punk

wipers had a big boost from cobain fandom amirite? just like the raincoats and the vaselines etc

Outside of Athens, Ga and surroundings, in the beginning Pylon was bigger in the UK than the US. This changed later, though.

Missed the inclusion of Theoretical Girls--yeah, they had their moments, although sometimes a bit too proggy for me--but going in a CBGB/loft/warehouse/dungeon mutation of live early 80s King Crimson, so not bad in that sense. And not always like that anyway though I like Branca's own albums better. emil.y, Pylon have their own good thread, and yeah they had their own standing, before they got grossed out by touring with U2 early on, and dropped out of the music business for a while. Their eventual reunion album was okay for a reunion album, then they were live-only, with no CD reissues until fairly recently. They were damn good, live or studio: the earthiest first rate post-punk band I've ever heard. Took their name from the title of Faulkner's boozedelic tale of rowdy barnstorming stunt pilots.

i don't know who I was thinking of, but when i said i liked Trisomie 21 upthread, i think i was probably getting them confused with someone else. just been trying to find good youtubes of them and they're all a bit lame. very euro cure with terrible singing, not really my thing. brainfartz.

only heard the lines fairly recently, had no idea before that the adult net's white night was a cover

one of my favourite songs, so a no brainer for me. Would have liked to see Durutti Column on the list though
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyEeYSEPm0Y

might well have voted Theoretical Girls had they made the cut, Delta 5 prolly have the most consistent highs of the bands here I know. love Wipers but don't tend to think of them as a postpunk band as such

I don't want to hijack the thread with more on New Musik but Nick is right in classing them alongside Buggles and M as studio boffins making proto-synth pop

LEST ANYONE FORGET THE KORGIS.

My last tv appearance involved telling The Korgis their single was terrible.

It was called "Young and Russian", and it is.

i know it'll seem parochial but i'd go for the best of the australian bands above almost all of these. and i'm not talking about the ones i was in either. how about the primitive calculators, even.

Give us a list please! And comments.

The Sunday Painters!

posted a few times here before but http://nonightsweats.com/nns_band.htm has the sydney bands. melbourne's scene was about the same size but better documented (in film) but the little band scene was great. see the raft of compilations released since 2000 including "can't stop it I and II", "inner city sound" and m-squareds "terrace industry"

Pylon . . . with no CD reissues until fairly recently.

They were one of the first of the bands of those on the poll to see a reissue of any of their material, with the nearly quarter century old "Hits" CD (1989), which combined most of their catalog - the best of the two albums and their singles, minus maybe seven songs and some alternate versions.

Actually, based on some quick research, they were THE FIRST of all these bands to see a reissue on CD. The only bands with earlier CDs are And Also The Trees, Asylum Party, For Against, Sad Lovers and Giants, Trisomie 21, Wah! and Wild Swans . . . but technically, those bands were still going when CDs became a thing, and strictly speaking they didn't really have reissues before Pylon, just new releases that came out on CD before any of the other bands saw actual reissues.

For Against, though a tough choice it was.

Nice curveball throwing Second Layer in there, I must say.

Voted for Wild Swans, amongst many worthy options. (But the Chameleons, Comsat Angels and the Sound are among my all-time favorites.)

One of the better legato-n-chorus post-punk riffs, Sad Lovers and Giant's "Clint"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWqBCid_eJ0

And as much as I like and have been involved with post-punk (I've worked with several of the bands and know members of many of them) . . . I have to say that this is a very awkward list.

Some bands not included perhaps should have been . . . like the Sound, who never sold back in the day and were fairly obscure until recently. Others, like Wah! and New Musik actually had chart hits, so why were they included?

Many of the bands I wouldn't call post-punk per se, as they were far more "alternative," with roots in the very pop side of post-punk (like Echo & the Bunnymen, Comsat Angels, even U2) and eschewing much of the real experimentation, politics, philosophy and malaise as what I'd consider 'real' post-punk (name, bands that were only an iteration or two away from actual "punk.") I'm not knocking any of these bands are even mentioning them by name - I like many of the posts by Fastnbulbous and know he digs this sound a lot. And I like some of the bands, too! But some of them owe very little directly to punk *or* post-punk, and more than a couple of them have / had members who would happily admit not liking any of that stuff! A poll with For Against in there with the Fire Engines doesn't make sense, really. A poll with For Against and Win might have. If you see what I'm saying.

I think this mix of some of these bands with UK bands more overtly post-PUNK (those on Rough Trade / New Hormones / and the odd (early) Cherry Red band, plus the Fire Engines, Glaxo Babies, et al) doesn't make much sense. When you toss in disparate American bands like the Embarrassment or Y Pants or the Individuals, things get really confusing. The Sleepers, okay, despite their real lack of recordings. The Embarrassment - yeah, I can hear Marc Riley in stuff like "Death Travels West," and Y Pants may be very vaguely analogous to something like Delta 5, but the Individuals were mediocre watered down version of what became college rock at best (in retrospect) - why bother? Some of these bands barely have any profile today, others only due to the good fortune of being reissued in a relatively high profile way. Some of the bands have had their recorded legacies treated really well on CD (even if they don't deserve it!), others haven't. It's a crime that the Delta 5's "See The Whirl" isn't on CD, and that the Delta 5 collection that did come out suffered from poor sound (as did the Essential Logic collection), though at least Essential Logic and Kleenex will do deservedly well.

The ones here I suspect will be genuinely underrated? The Nightingales, the Blue Orchids, the Embarrassment, Josef K. Maybe Virgin Prunes and Delta 5. I'd have liked to see the Transmitters, Cowboys International and Rip, Rig & Panic included, among many others. This should probably have been three separate polls!

But the biggest thing is that people are (obviously) only going to vote for the bands they've heard, so the greatest one most people haven't heard won't be discovered. Once poll results are in, I'm going to do a voodoo ranking versus actual sales thing (I have a good idea for most of the bands how well they've sold) and post who has the best ratio of poor sales to high reputation in my opinion. Totally unscientific, of course. Because we'll never know for sure.

Awkward--that's the word I was looking for. Exactly. In part, the problem is the all-encompassing vagueness of the term "post-punk," but even by that loose standard it's not as if the Scientists have anything to do with the Visitors (I'm assuming we're talking about the Edinburgh Visitors, not the Dundee one, and certainly not the Aussie, post-Birdman one....) I mean, the Scientists were mod-pop punks who went swamp, while Edinburgh's Visitors were quirky Messtheticians who succumbed to Joy Division damage before being able to get their LP done.

As with Simon Reynolds's book, Australia and Germany get very short shrift here....

The problem with these things is always whether "post punk" refers to a style, or to a period. And since it meant different things in different places, it gets tricky fast.

And yeah, that KIll Rock Stars Delta 5 thing was sonically weak--super noisy--I came up with something better from a ratty copy of the 12" singles comp without even trying. And the LP gets knocked around critically, but mostly because post punk fans have heard the singles and not the album. Needs to get reissued, soon. Weird that it hasn't, with all the lesser things that have seen the light of day of late.

Can I air my grievance here as well?

I've come to hate the term "post-punk."

As very much a second generation kid (now in my early 30's) who didn't know this stuff the first time around and just gravitated to it as something that I liked, I always found the bands I liked (the Chameleons, the Cure, Joy Division/New Order, the Sound, OMD, the Comsats, Echo, etc.) in one of two places in the used record stores: the rock section or the punk section IF —and that's a big if— they even had one.

I mean, the Ramones were called punk AND new wave in the late 70's/early 80's. Same with the Clash. How do we classify those bands now?

(rhetorical question: punk, for the most part)

Further, what is Orange Juice? "post-punk"

And what is Culture Club? "new wave"

Just because one *looks* way cooler in retrospect, it does not merit a new sub-genre tag to delineate "coolness."

I even have a friend who's a decade older than I am that objects to calling bands like For Against or the Chameleons "new wave" in favor of calling them "post-punk" because, in his own words, "new wave is poppier and more produced."

I call bullshit.

Tony Wilson considered the Durutti Column, Spandau Ballet and Joy Division to be "new wave" bands. Because they were inspired by punk, but sounded nothing like it.

If it's good enough for Tony fucking Wilson, it's good enough for me.

Thesis of this post: "post-punk" is a bullshit label created by idiots that wanted say they liked new wave bands without actually saying, "I like this new wave band."

xp Last two bitchfests appeared before I finished this, still thinking on whether to deal with that can of worms...

Nice to see so much activity on a Sunday! Post-punk of course covers a wide area and means different things to different people. I originally was going to stick to the area of proto-"dark wave" that I covered in my piece and accompanying mix, but could already anticipate the complaints about this and that missing, so crammed in everything I could think of. I have to say Rip, Rig + Panic was a total oversight, not sure how I missed that one. I had not heard Transmitters before, and had forgotten about Cowboys International as I didn't have their album, which is being corrected now. Sounds like straight-up synth pop to me, but admittedly they probably have more post-punk credentials than New Musik.

I'm aware that Wah! did have some commercial impact at the time in the UK, but I also know that they've been critical whipping boys compared to peers like the Bunnymen, Teardrops, Psych Furs, Soft Boys, Simple Minds, etc. So now they kind of are under the radar, underheard, underdogs. As a Feelies fan I was pretty excited about the Individuals reissue. Whether or not it measured up to my expectations, I still liked them enough to bother. I may not think they'll win, but that's up to the voters. So you're suggesting I should have done separate polls for the various sub-genres within post-punk? I don't think it would be worth the inevitable arguments about who would go in which poll and the risk of diminishing interest/participation.

But if there are still people passionate enough about these bands to spill some drinks, flip some tables and shout a little, that's a damn pleasant surprise!

xxp I've got a couple great Australian comps. I might have included more bands if I heard some full albums. I figure a candidate for this poll should at least have put out a full length.

So you're suggesting I should have done separate polls for the various sub-genres within post-punk?

I guess my point is —and if I sounded fired up, it was not at you, because you certainly were not the first to start the whole "post-punk" bullshit— that: how can there be sub-genres within a sub-genre that is completely fabricated?

I support not releasing CDs. Gotta have downloads though! Ill bring it up at our next meeting.

Another Thing from the Crypt. Bands not quite as iconic, but still a good record. Don't think anyone will be reissuing it. Mutant Sounds had it up at one point, I think.

Posted this the other day in the Australian Post Punk thread, but that may be too narrow a demographic....

For my money, the greatest post-punk band that nobody's ever heard is a group from Wollongong Australia called the Sunday Painters. Three singles, two LPs, cassettes, and comp tracks. At work on a reissue, but thought I'd put a song on on Sound Cloud since Monday marked the thirty-year anniversary of one of their high points: the Sedition Festival, a three-day showcase of 22 bands, as well as assorted video artists, at the Trade Union Club. $10 for the lot….Other bands included the Scientists, Wet Taxi, Celibate Rifles. The Same, and Severed Heads.

The Painters played the opening night. Three and a half songs have survived from their set; two of which made it onto the Sedition—Go Broke cassette. This one, “In My Dreams,” did not, though it’s a monster, reworked into drum-machine form from its origins as a practice-room kraut jam outtake that made up the b-side of the band’s second single (Painting By Numbers, 1980, 250 copies). Like X covering PIL, with a New Order keyboard flourish.

Please feel free to share, to download, to play.

https://soundcloud.com/michael-train/in-my-dreams

Taught myself to play "Smokescreen" by the Desperate Bicycles and it only underscored how unusual it is. The guy sings straight through for three and a half minutes or however long it is and there are eight verses.

hey, thanks, that's pretty awesome! xpost

Thought I'd try it as a video (well, at least a photo montage):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NTISSJPyLw

Cool. I'm really proud of the iMovie Ken Burns video montage I made for Disco Zombies and Happy Refugees.

Crazy what you can do within ten minutes of opening iMovie for the first time, but wow do I now have respect for real video editors....

One year anniversary, here's a Spotify playlist finally! None of the early And Also The Trees, The Sound or Comsat Angels, but a good sampling of most of what I wrote about.

http://open.spotify.com/user/1212496385/playlist/3RkhJjuRHTIamrXejVwa9H
spotify:user:1212496385:playlist:3RkhJjuRHTIamrXejVwa9H

50 Minute And Also The Trees documentary:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgp8gwgjTPs&list=PL6B10D8ECB2D36111

90 Minute live show recorded September 28, 2013 at La Cave à Musique in Mâcon, Burgundy, France:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iOivHqNgpQ&list=FLvS7HOg0xXDKPhctmMyG1Qw

Documentary embedded (I hope?):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgp8gwgjTPs&list=PL6B10D8ECB2D36111&feature=share

Tiny Desk Unit has never been mentioned on ILM? I stumbled across this video today and remembered the name, probably from New York Rocker. This kind of art/dance/drone/skronk would have been like catnip to me when this was new, but I'm finding it only mildly interesting in 2014. Great that these Hurrah videos are out there, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHHwKO9NvgU

Nice to see this topic active again. Reminds me that we've finally made some real headway with our Sunday Painters reissues. (The Painters were a Wollongong, Australia art punk band most active from 1980-86, putting out records on their own Terminal Records in minuscule runs.) We'll be collecting the band's three singles on one LP (see the link below), out in January, then doing the two albums by the end of spring. Each with digital downloads and bonus tracks drawn from live cassettes and a radio appearance. Punk, industrial, pop, prog, and experimental, sometimes all at once. A Cab-Voltaire take on "Rebel Rebel." The Homosexuals with a drum machine. And so on.

Out on Whats Your Rupture. Home also to the Tronics and Parquet Courts.

http://whatsyourrupture.bigcartel.com/product/sunday-painters-in-my-dreams-lp-pre-order

So we now have hard copies of the Sunday Painters singles collection. Should start to show up in stores soon. Very exciting. There'll also be digital downloads from all the usual places. For those of you in Australia, your best bets will be R.I.P. Society/Repressed Records in Sydney, or Music Farmer's in Wollongong, though there may well be some other spots, too. By May we're hoping to get the band's two albums out.

Sounds great, let me know when they become available on CD or reasonably priced lossless.

Speaking of unheard post-punk bands (who have been heard with the help of Michael Train and myself!)...Happy Refugees are following up our reissue from a couple of years ago with a self-released newly recorded album, some new songs, some vintage unrecorded songs. Great stuff. A bit less edge than the old stuff, a bit more mature, but what do you expect? Great website here: http://www.happyrefugees.com/

been getting into the deep freeze mice reissue a bit, anyone else a fan?

No plans for any CDs, but I'll look into the possibilities for lossless. Still not sure what sites will have the record, so I'm not sure if it will be up on any that offer lossless. If I learn of one, I'll post it here. That said, it takes a superior set of ears and equipment to tell the difference between lossless and 320 kbps coding these days. I listen with mastering-quality AKG headphones and Focal monitors and can only occasionally notice the difference, and then only in direct A/B comparisons on a high decay.

I think most, if not all episodes of New Wave Theatre are on YouTube which feature a bunch of mysterious post-punk bands. (as well as other genres)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA70OzHvxP4

You can stream all the Sunday Painters singles here:

http://noisey.vice.com/en_au/blog/stream-the-of-the-sunday-painters-early-80s-diy-punk

here's some post-punk / diy spam. it's out in july. michael train did the audio restoration, there's an introduction written by dan selzer and i compiled it, so should be fairly ILM friendly spam.

Now That's What I Call DIY (Cult classics from the Post-Punk era 1978/82) - https://soundcloud.com/optimo-music/various-now-thats-what-i-call