Punk and New Wave

XTC “English Settlement” (1982)

What on earth was I thinking of? After English Settlement I gave up on XTC for 20 years! There’s simply no excuse. I knew the first time I heard English Settlement I was listening to a classic and yet I still let my interest lapse. This is probably one of the most perfectly crafted double albums by any English band, notwithstanding Exile On Main Street and London Calling. It contains such complex, intricate constructions the word “song” seems too restrictive a word to describe their function. Like an absorbing novel, a spectacular movie or a sumptuous meal, this album can be enjoyed on many levels. There was an abridged version of English Settlement released at the same time as this double and I’m aware that many prefer it, feeling it cuts out the filler. I’ve never heard it and I never want to. Listening to English Settlement today, I can’t think of a single track I’d want to get rid of. It would be like choosing a favourite from among my kids.

Considering how perfect this album is I’ve always felt that it was around the release of English Settlement that it all started going wrong for XTC. An overstressed and exhausted Andy Partridge was overtaken by stage-fright and suffered a breakdown soon after the album’s release. As a result the album passed relatively unnoticed. How huge could this band have been if given the opportunity to publicise and tour English Settlement? How huge could this band have been if Partridge had ever been able to overcome his fear? Tragic really.

Even though Colin Moulding contributes the ska rhythms of “English Roundabout”, the twisted “Fly On The Wall” and the excellent “Ball And Chain”, English Settlement really is Partridge’s album. “Senses Working Overtime” would provide the band with their only top ten single. “All Of A Sudden (It’s Too Late)” is simply sublime. “Yacht Dance” is a mix of pure pop and English folk and Dave Gregory’s Spanish guitar is a revelation and the flamenco rhythms continue to ripple through anti-gun rant “Melt The Guns”. “It’s Nearly Africa” brings the sounds of that continent into XTC’s quaintly weird world and “Snowman” takes what is well-worn subject matter for a song – a crumbling relationship – and comes at it from an unusual perspective.

English Settlement is a fabulous album but, amazingly, still isn’t the high point for XTC but, as an example of the quintessential English band playing the quintessential English eccentrics, it’s difficult to beat. –Ian

Magazine “Real Life” (1978)

You can’t seem to pick up a music magazine nowadays without some interviewee citing Howard Devoto and Magazine as defining influences upon their own musical aspirations. Either that or some sycophantic retrospective which seems totally out of proportion for a band who were nothing more than a mote in the eye of music chronology. Amazingly, in this case, the hype is totally justified. Unhappy with the direction The Buzzcocks were taking and, possibly, recognising the limited shelf life of punk, Devoto formed Magazine and attempted to weave punk conviction into a more conventional and structured rock format. I’m convinced that longevity was no more guaranteed down this route, but it proved a panoramic trip whilst it lasted. The album is full of highlights and some quite astounding musical performances, particularly the bass and keyboards on the likes of “Definitive Gaze”. Messrs Adamson, McGeoch, Jackson and Formula deserve praise. Personally I have reservations about Devoto’s vocal style but as a discordant counterpoint to the music it works perfectly. “Shot By Both Sides” is spiky rock at its best and “The Light Pours Out Of Me” remains in my personal top twenty to this day. Magazine paved the path for post punk, pity they couldn’t walk the road for longer themselves. –Ian

Circle Jerks “Group Sex” (1980)

When Keith Morris left seminal Californian Punksters Black Flag, it was obvious he needed something even more shocking, for pushing the boundaries of music and taste was it seems his ambition. So in 1979 he formed Circle Jerks  with Greg Hetson (Guitar), Roger Rogerson (Bass), and Lucky Lehrer (Drums). A reputation for the most wild local shows and enormous amounts of alcohol intake onstage and off started the folklore legend which attracted the disaffected SoCal Skater punks. The debut “Group Sex” is amazing by its brevity, with 14 songs spanning just under 16 minutes. It’s typical early American Punk thrash, razor sharp lyrics, tinny production and songs covering Politics, middle class Hollywood malaise, drugs, and of course sex… What seems unusual for the time and the sentiment, is that Hetson is a strong Guitarist and musically the band seems tight which in turn raises the quality above many of the bands of the period. The highlights include “I Just Want Some Skank”, “Beverly Hills” and “World Up My Ass”.That same year, the group was one of several California punk bands to be immortalized in the Penelope Spheeris documentary “The Decline of Western Civilization”, and live versions of four songs from “Group Sex” appear on the movie’s soundtrack album. “Group Sex” is a rabid pulsing slice of aggression liberally smattered with gruff and gritty lyrics from Morris. Though not essential, it’s a useful snapshot of American Punk circa 1980.  –Ben

Japan “Adolescent Sex” (1978)

Deciding enough’s enough is a tough call to make at the best of times. For a band accustomed to fame and its requisite trappings the severance must be that much harder. So it’s understandable why so many plow on regardless of their relevance or quality of work. The Stones, for instance, will continue until someone drops dead but their sound will remain timeless. On the other hand, Bon Jovi have had nothing to say since the early 90s but refuse to accept the fact. Japan belong to an elite club. Although diehards will argue, they jacked it in at just the right time leaving a stunning, if flawed, volume of work. I’ve always had a preference for their original incarnation as trash glam funksters a la New York Dolls or Hanoi Rocks but they were criminally ignored. There is some quite brilliant guitar playing from Rob Dean, particularly on “Suburban Love”, “Wish You Were Black” and “Television” but this, along with David Sylvian’s strangled, sneering, kazoo-like vocals were lost when they turned towards the New Romantic movement. Their musical vista of the seedy, dangerous, disposable isolation of modern day living deserves retrospective re-evaluation. –Ian

Devo “Are We Not Men?” (1978)

Imagine the scene. The house lights dim on an expectant crowd. It’s difficult to see through the darkness but the swish of heavy fabric announces the stage curtains being drawn back. The spots slowly rise on a stage shrouded in a huge sheet of black plastic which rises to cover the vague shape of a drum-kit. A bright beam of white light picks out movement from under the sheet and flashes off a number of blades which pierce the plastic and slash vicious tears into the black skin. Like a sci-fi caesarean Devo push themselves through, clutching instruments and dressed in vivid yellow boiler suits. It takes a little time to rip the sheet away from the drums before they launch into “Uncontrollable Urge”, but it’s still got to be one of the best entrances ever.

Far more guitar-led than their later releases, Are We Not Men? Was considered radical upon its release in 1978. Much closer to the punk revolution than is realised, Devo savaged the American materialistic way of life and dared to suggest that humankind was de-evolving. From sex related psycho-babble (“Uncontrollable Urge”) to satellites falling from the sky (“Space Junk”), from consumerism (“Too Much Paranoias”) to genetics (“Mongoloid”), this is a very strange and, on one plain, deeply disturbing album. It remains a powerful indictment of the human condition. –Ian

Replacements “Let It be” (1984)

For me this is far and away the best album The Replacements ever made. Some people say that they wish rock and roll was always imbued with the spirit that The Clash brought to it on “London Calling”. I could easily say the same thing about “Let it Be”. This is the perfect synthesis of rock aggression and songwriting finesse. A song like “Androgynous” probably wouldn’t move me so much if it had been more slickly produced. The raw beauty of these songs makes me believe in them. There have been a million songs written about adolescence but “Sixteen Blue” is one of the only ones that really feels like it. The painful yearning and confusion of being sixteen is captured perfectly in those crunching guitar chords and especially the guitar solo with which the song closes. Rather than offering release, the end of the song raises the unresolved tension higher and higher. It is full of beauty and sadness. And then we have the album closer, “Answering Machine”, with its fabulous, tight guitar playing, its earnest, pleading vocal and gorgeous melodicism. This is one of the best songs ever written about romantic obsession. Indeed this is one of the best rock songs period. In its rawness, energy and its dual loyalties to grunge and melody, in 1984 this album sounded like the future itself. –Javasean

Beyond Nuggets: 
A Guide to ’60s Ephemera

In 1972 Elektra Records’ Jac Holzman asked future Patti Smith Group guitarist and bassist Lenny Kay to compile what was a essentially a glorified mixed tape, resulting in Nuggets: Original Artyfacts of the First Psychedelic Era. This release became synonymous with the term “Garage Rock”, but this designation is not entirely accurate. Though rough and tumble staples like the 13th Floor Elevators and the Seeds are represented, more poppy-sounding bands like the Mojo Men, Sagittarius (featuring Glenn Campbell on vocals), and a host of other acts—some of whom were nowhere near a suburban garage when they cut these sides — are there too. Nuggets’ legacy is not so much its innovative (re)packaging of near hits, but its role in defining an aesthetic and its establishing of multiple genres and sub-genres: acid rock, power pop, sunshine pop, imitation Merseybeat, Dylan copycats, blue-eyed soul, even early Latino-rock  — they’re all here along with more that send rock critics reaching for their thesauruses and record collectors scrambling for their paypal accounts. Perhaps neither Kaye nor Holzman knew the long-term ramifications of their Frankenstenian experiment. Indeed, the monster they created essentially spawned a whole industry, that of the Esoteric 60’s Music Compilation. It’s an industry that refuses to die, even almost 40 years later. Exploring this brave new world can be a daunting task. Here then is a quick guide to some logical starting points:

1. Pebbles – Conceived and created in Australia only a few years after the original Nuggets, this series focused on more raw and obscure (though not entirely unknown) acts from the US. Numerous volumes and offshoot series of widely varying quality proliferated through the 70’s and 80’s, but volumes 1-6 are pretty darn solid.

2. Back From The Grave – One of the few series worthy of the “60’s Garage Rock” classification, the US bands represented here are young, fast, raw, and sometimes very poorly recorded, which undoubtedly adds to its authenticity.


3. Acid Visions – Regional garage and psych compilations are very common. This one focuses on the Lone Star State, which produced a surprisingly diverse and consistently high quality array of sounds in the ’60s. The third and final volume focuses on female artists, a very underrepresented demographic in this male-dominated realm.

4. English Freakbeat – Since suburban two-car garages are not as common in England, perhaps it was inevitable that a moniker for similar music from the British Isles would be invented, and “Freakbeat” seems just as apt as any. Though the bands on these five LPs share many commonalities with their American garage brethren, a rawer and more purist blues sensibility often dominates.

5. Rubble – While this Anglocentric series covers the Freakbeat sound like the series mentioned above, its emphasis is on the more cerebral and whimsical Psych-Pop of the late ’60s British and European scenes. Though spotty at times, many installments in this twenty volume series have numerous great tracks.

Further listening: One would think that by this point everything worthwhile has been unearthed, but the excavation continues. As unknown sides from the US and British scenes of the 60’s become scarcer, collectors are looking to more unexplored caches. Private pressings, underground Prog Rock, and Global Garage Rock have been the subject of many comps as of late. Cambodian Rocks delves into a thriving Asian scene that was tragically quashed when the Khmer Rouge took power. Love, Peace, and Poetry, a series still in progress, spans the globe to bring listeners impossibly rare pysch from the ’60s and ’70s. —Richard P

Are we forgetting your favorite series? Share your comments here:

Felt “The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories” (1984)

“The Strange Idols Pattern…” is the masterpiece of early indiepop, although is often less considered than Felt’s fifth album, the organ driven “Forever Breathes The Lonely Word”. Here Maurice Deebank provides the best guitar playing I’ve ever heard, a constant whirl of sweet jangly picking (on a 12 string guitar I think) and sometimes classical/Spanish melodies; Lawrence encapsulates such imaginative and brilliant solo playing in wonderful three-chord songs, sung with a monotonous and subtle tone that never sounds cheesy or pathetic like Morrissey’s howling. I understand that such vocals can be considered boring, but I think they’re the best accompaniment for the stream of background notes that – at least for me – has to be on the frontline, while the vocals are secondary. Absolutely great album, my favourite song here is “Crystal Ball”, with the best guitar work ever made by Deebank, and a constant sense of tragedy that remains subtle and never explodes, not even in the final short solo. –Gneo

The Stooges “Raw Power” (1973)

“The raw power of Iggy Pop predated punk.” An anonymous quote I heard from some time back that sums up the very essence of what Iggy and the Stooges were about. And with their 1973 release, Raw Power, their muscle is in full-flex-mode. Famously produced by, David Bowie, and the band in a state of disorder – the combining couple crafted an album that, not only became a trailblazer, but also set the tone for what would come next, punk. Because of this, Raw Power, was molded into the blueprint of how rock ‘n’ roll should always be: dark, dangerous, and full of filth. The out of ordinary sound for its time has still never been equaled, many imitators came and went, struggling with the crass intensity, but they were all failed attempts. Iggy made a point to declare conventionalism was out, and in its place — sleazy drug-fueled globs of noise. The Stooges remain one of my all-time favorite bands. And it has a lot to do with Raw Power. Some hipsters might declare, Raw Power, the weakest out of the holy trinity, due to its heavy praise, but there’s no denying its incendiary explosive strength. And on more than one occasion, I have been known to declare it my favorite album, ever. –Jason

Tears For Fears “The Hurting” (1983)

Even though I was well past the teenage angst phase when The Hurting was released it still managed to strike a mighty big chord. If you thought that electronic pop was nothing more than lightweight froth, then this album will come as something of a shock. This is as close as music gets to defining the nightmare that is adolescence. It is amazingly depressing yet musically uplifting. The melancholic atmosphere is palpable especially on gruesome downer tracks like “Watch Me Bleed” and “Start Of The Breakdown” which are perfect fodder for manic-depressives. For my money this is the only Tears For Fears album worth owning. Here they revel in an unrefined talent combined with a pristine sound which would later be soiled by over production on the likes of Songs From The Big Chair. All the songs on The Hurting have been penned by Roland Orzabal and I read somewhere that the album is a reflection of his troubled childhood. So, while I could relate to this from a teenage perspective, Orzabal was suffering through this at a much younger age – which gives the album an even more harrowing edge. As he says “memories fade but the scars still linger”.  –Ian

The Teardrop Explodes “Kilimanjaro” (1980)

It’s amazing to think that one of the great eccentrics of popular music, Julian Cope, originated from what, on an initial listen, appears to be a straightforward post punk, electronic pop band. Delve a little deeper beneath the swathes of synthesised sound however and those original impression begin to subtlety alter. The lyrics carry an esoteric intelligence which belies their frivolous accompaniment and the unusual inclusion of a brass section is a masterstroke. But, as someone far smarter than me once said, “Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t make it profound”. What gives this album it’s cutting edge is the combination of all these elements which come together to form a frenetic, catchy, cohesive whole. The Teardrop Explodes were cut from the same cloth as Echo And The Bunnymen but their use of synths gave them a far more radio-friendly edge. I love the dumb chorus for “When I Dream” and the pounding drumbeats on “Bouncing Babies” and the way the keyboards seem to jog along with Cope’s voice on “Brave Boys Keep Their Promises”. The brevity of the brass on both “Ha Ha I’m Drowning” and “Treason” is both unexpected and uplifting. In fact the whole of Kilimanjaro can be treated as just an uplifting pop album but there’s far more going on than that. The problem is that whatever is going on is securely locked inside Cope’s mind. Yes there are references to television series The Outer Limits in “Sleeping Gas” and that song also mentions Rafferty, a seventies series staring Patrick McGoohan which was a precursor to Hugh Lawrie’s House, but I’ve no idea why those things are namechecked. Like a line in another song says: “Poppies are in the fields, don’t ask me what that means”. The thing is, you don’t need to know and maybe it’s even better not knowing because you never know what to expect with Cope. Kilimanjaro is often overlooked when discussing post-punk music – it deserves better. –Ian

The Modern Lovers “The Modern Lovers” (1976)

This albums flawlessness is unparalleled. Jonathan Richman has crafted an ideal record that is filled with exceptional songs. “Pablo Picasso” has to be one of my favorites. I can never get enough of it and “Hospital” is right there alongside it. Just beautiful love stories told with such panache and Richman’s voice is perfectly suited with each spoken word. Listening to “Hospital” is heartrending, but when reading the lyrics it’s almost like a six year old wrote it. But, this album is anything but ordinary. It’s a candid masterpiece that ranks at the top of all my lists. –Jason