In the beginning, there was punk. Then, after a few years of tumult, punk begat post-punk. The fundamentalists among you may be asking, “If post-punk evolved from punk, why are there still punks?” I don’t know, dummy—go ask Richard Dawkins.
Post-punk began as an extrapolation of ‘70s punk, but became a movement of its own, borrowing its forebear’s energy, but welcoming experimentation and exploration, often incorporating jagged guitar, prominent bass, art school aesthetics and intellectual lyrics. The simplest definition might be that it’s music by punks with library cards and amphetamine habits.
Here are fifty important songs from the first wave of post-punk you should know if you want to impress that bartender with the Factory Records tattoo. (Follow along with the playlist)
50. Crispy Ambulance “Sexus” (1982)
These guys opened for Joy Division so you’d think their post-punk bona fides would be unassailable. That being said, a band called The Actors featuring the bald brothers from Right Said Fred also opened for JD, so maybe it isn’t as big a deal as you’d think.
49. Glaxo Babies “Who Killed Bruce Lee” (1979)
The ‘Babies suspect foul play, but the latest mainstream answer to the titular question is that Lee died from hyponatremia, or having too little sodium in his bloodstream, likely caused by excessive water consumption.
48. Fra Lippo Lippi “A Moment Like This” (1981)
Norway’s Fra Lippo Lippi started out cool as hell but somehow wound up making saccharine synth crap even your mom would think is too corny. However, this track from their debut shows the Joy Division devotees doing their best uptempo, downtrodden work.
47. Lowlife “Gallery of Shame” (1985)
If this melancholy track from perpetually bummed-out Scots Lowlife doesn’t drag down your mood, you may be pathologically upbeat and should see a doctor (it could be a tumor).
46. A Certain Ratio “Knife Slits Water” (1982)
These chaps helped integrate a dancier sound to the Mancusian post-punk landscape, which would later explode with the Madchester scene. Without ACR’s pioneering weirdo coked-up hipster punk-disco, there would be no LCD Soundsystem—make of that what you will.
45. Swell Maps “The Helicopter Spies” (1980)
There’s a charming—if paranoid—pop song buried beneath the cacophonous squall of distortion here. It’s easy to see why Swell Maps’ blend of melody and raucous noise would go on to influence bands like The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pavement and Sonic Youth.
44. U2 “Out Of Control” (1980)
Before The Edge was inexorably fused with his effects rack like some kind of beanie-clad Brundlefly, U2 were capable of producing the occasional hard-charging gem like this one.
43. Tones on Tail “Performance” (1984)
Between stints in Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, Daniel Ash and co. produced one gloriously strange album as Tones on Tail. The eerie “Performance” comes shambling along like a New Order track risen from the grave.
42. Bush Tetras “Too Many Creeps” (1980)
Light years ahead of its time, this dance-punk track would’ve fit right in in early-21st century Brooklyn. Close your eyes and you can just picture some mustachioed dipshits huddled in a Williamsburg dive bar bathroom doing lines of cheap coke with this song booming in the background.
https://open.spotify.com/track/17yxzUcZSu3S9KyoGF0ckI?si=3c8d9142a2e449b1
41. Bunnydrums “Little Room” (1983)
This group of Philly freaks drew inspiration from sci-fi—”Little Room” comes from their album PKD, named for weirdo genius Philip K. Dick. A chunky bassline is layered with staccato guitar and creepy vocals in this cheesesteak-take on the British post-punk sound.
40. Devo “Gut Feeling” (1978)
What begins with an uncharacteristically delicate repetition of five arpeggiated guitar chords builds and eventually erupts into a venomous anthem whose ferocity is quite the foil to the band’s later twerpcore hit “Whip It.” One might be compelled to exclaim, “Hey, these dorks can rock!”
39. The Chameleons “Paper Tigers” (1983)
Feel free to light up a clove and listen to this one in a cemetery at dusk. Sometimes this band is referred to as The Chameleons UK, because some dopey American band of jerks that no one’s ever heard of nabbed the name first and the US is full of litigious buttholes.
38. The Raincoats “You’re a Million” (1979)
The young women in The Raincoats seemed determined to buck every convention of rock, as demonstrated on this manic track. They even incorporated violin, a decidedly un-punk instrument, but an important callback to The Velvet Underground’s viola-wielding John Cale.
37. Josef K “Fun ‘N’ Frenzy” (1981)
For a small country, Scotland sure produced a disproportionate number of great bands. Is it something to do with all the sheep? Peat moss? Irn Bru? Named after a Kafka character, you’d think Josef K would be more dour, but this track is pretty upbeat and fun.
36. Comsat Angels “On The Beach” (1980)
Like Joy Division, these British lads loved showing off their affinity for subversive literature, naming themselves after a J.G. Ballard story. Cheerily, this song is based on a British novel of the same name which is about nuclear apocalypse.
35. The Birthday Party “Release the Bats” (1982)
This noisy number from fucked-up Aussie miscreants The Birthday Party is one of the early salvos of the nascent gothic movement. The song is about vampires humping and was likely the inspiration for the Twilight series.
34. Kleenex (LiLiPUT) “Die Matrosen” (1980)
Swiss girl band Kleenex had to change their name when Big Tissue’s lawyers came after them. This song, by the way, has it all—if by “all” you mean an absolutely filthy bass tone, a sick drum beat, catchy vocals, saxophone and whistling. What else is there?
33. And Also the Trees “So This Is Silence” (1983)
These moody kids from Worcestershire (yes, where the sauce is from!) were taken under The Cure’s wing as baby goths, given opening slots on some Cure dates. “So This Is Silence” owes as much to Joy Division as it does The Cure, even surpassing the former in terms of tormented howling.
32. Pink Turns Blue “Walking On Both Sides” (1987)
This chillingly catchy track by Berliner darkwave progenitors Pink Turns Blue is pretty much as German as it gets: cold, precise and humorless, which is pretty much what you’d expect from some lads growing up in the shadow of the Berlin Wall.
31. Delta 5 “Mind Your Own Business” (1979)
It’s hard to top the beautiful dissonance of those harsh guitars slashing across this track’s dance-punk groove. This innocent-sounding song from the politically active Delta 5 is actually a defiant “fuck off” to conservative efforts to legislate people’s private lives. Mind your own business, indeed.
A fully instrumental album dropped, like many other Death Grips projects, by complete surprise. While there are plenty of great cuts to revisit on this project, it seems to have been dropped as a way for the band to thumb their noses at overly eager fans awaiting the second half of “The Powers That B” (i.e. the tracklist spelling out “JENNY DEATH WHEN”). While there are plenty of solid cuts from Zach and Andy on this project, it goes to show the importance of having a manic idealogue shouting over your drumming.
In the wake of their fallout with Epic Records at the end of 2012, Death Grips continued to relish in the electronic with “Government Plates.” The jarring opener is without a doubt one of the most iconic DG tracks, and there are plenty of energizing instrumentals on the album (including a guitar contribution from a fresh off “Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2” Robert Pattinson), but the project is ultimately weighed down by a lack of consistency. There are better examples of intense digital production to come on this list.
By this point in their career, much of the mystique that surrounded the group in their early years had all but given way to the ironic memes and ever-growing fandom that comes with being an internet darling. So what do you do as a band whose identity was forged by jarring noise when the audience is no longer shocked? You get the director of “Shrek” to do a spoken word interlude, I guess. There are fantastic cuts that prove these guys can pump out bangers without issue, but it lacks the same urgency of message that feels present in many of their previous efforts. And when you have a discography this good, something has to be a differentiator.
It’s hard to look past this album when examining the Death Grips discography. Partially because it feels like the musical equivalent of having a paranoid breakdown, but mostly because it has a fucking cock on the cover. This project comes out of the gate like a cannonball with pounding bass on tracks like “Come Up And Get Me” and “No Love” giving way to tinnier, glitching tracks like “Hunger Games.” The rollout of “No Love Deep Web” killed the band’s Epic contract, but not before they could blow their entire advance at the Chateau Marmont and cement their status as cult icons.
This beast of a double album was released in two halves with a year gap in between. The first disc could be described as an exercise in creative restrictions, with songs laden with percussive samples of Bjork’s voice. The glitchy, avant-garde (even by Death Grips standards) first half gives way to probably the most relentless run of guitar tracks in the discography on “Jenny Death.” The two halves are yin and yang, proof that the band is able to excel in sounds both minimal and maximal. And if they truly had stayed apart after their breakup (which was announced via a note on toilet paper), the suicidal anthem “On GP” would have been a fitting swan song.
“Exmilitary” exploded into the underground like a flaming bat out of hell, exhibiting a caustic mixture of genres that singed the eyebrows off of anyone listening. The mixtape opens with “Beware,” touting that Charles Manson recording, an ominous Jane’s Addiction sample, and a chorus that sounds like a war chant, setting a dark scene before the album continues its rapid descent into madness. Aggressive – almost primal – vocals, masterfully constructed walls of harsh noise consisting of skull-fucked samples of everything from Black Flag to cult recruitment tapes, and a penchant for mysticism and the occult, Death Grips’ debut is grungy, lo-fi, and has all the devil-may-care attitude that you want in a trailblazing punk record.
“Bottomless Pit” feels like a culmination of all the elements of sound and fury that Death Grips had sharpened their teeth on in the past. This album is seedy in its themes and lyrics but paired alongside an extremely polished recording. Nick Reinhart returns after his contributions on “Jenny Death” and plays some of the meanest guitar parts I’ve ever heard, a perfect match for Hill’s manic blast beat drumming. Morin’s synths are as visceral as ever and MC Ride’s vocals…well, he’s the same beast he always has been. Perhaps most surprising is how traditional much of this record feels in terms of song construction, especially considering their last project was so obtuse at times. In the words of the man himself, this project “will fuck you in half.”
There is not much to say about this album that hasn’t already been said by countless Anthony Fantano viewers. But legions of guys parroting YouTube talking points don’t make this album any less of a modern classic. “The Money Store” was a knockout left hook from a band fresh off a monster uppercut, a relentless tear of pounding drums, thundering synths, and foreboding lyrics painting a dystopian scene of technology and oppressive systems running rampant. The album is a digital grotesquerie filled with hit after hit like the electricity of “Get Got” and the buzzsaw melody of “I’ve Seen Footage.” With “The Money Store,” Death Grips spelled out plainly that anyone making industrial hip-hop was already playing catch-up. Deny it all you want, but this album is singular, quintessential, and most of all, it’s punk as all hell.
Despite being hailed as “inventing ska” by fabled rock critic Ronald Thomas Clontle, we think they could’ve scaled to even greater heights with a more skapropriate name. Back in 1976, even “Reel Big Fish” was up for grabs—you could’ve probably even snagged the dot com—and yet, they settled for Madness? We can’t help but imagine what could have been if they’d picked something a little more sane.
Kill Lincoln? Talk about a mood killer. I don’t know about you, but that name screams THE ASSASSINATION OF A BELOVED PRESIDENT. Ska’s supposed to pick up spirits, not drag ’em down. Why not riff on some other, less tragic presidential history? (
Emerging from the late ’90s ska scene, Catch 22 quickly asserted themselves as a standout force. The band wholeheartedly embraced the vibrant and energetic spirit of the genre, but they sure didn’t embrace the naming convention! We can fix this though. How about we give a nod to a different classic? Perhaps a J.D. Skalinger novel chock-full of skapportunity?
They’ve had plenty of hits, but this name is an absolute miss. It doesn’t even highlight that they have a superstar like Gwen Stefani in the band. I’m sure the other guys wouldn’t mind if she was spotlighted a little more from the start. It’s just good skadvertising.
This one is going to be painful. We all love Operation Ivy. They may be one of the reasons we’ve found ourselves 20 years later, writing joke articles for a punk website about ska bands. It’s a name emblazoned on our denim jackets and in our hearts. But rules are rules. And while no one is going to like this, it has to be done. (
This may be the worst offender. There are so many ska-ready animals. Skanimals, if you will. Let’s skip the niceties and just say: how dare you. Here are ten better ideas off the cuff.
They originally formed as Jack Kevorkian and the Suicide Machines. Oh my god, guys, how long are you going to dance around it?! It’s right there! I guess you just need us to assist you with this. (
They’re kinda ska, they’re kind of swing. Who cares? This is just an act of charity for the universe to select a new name. Their name is just… ugh, downright gross. I mean, did they pull that from a database of screen names on Chris Hansen’s computer? It doesn’t even have to be a pun. Let’s just think of anything less upsetting.
