post punk

Record #966: Belong – Common Era (2011)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve picked up a worrying habit in the last couple years: I’ve been sleep-record-shopping. I will often wake up to order confirmation emails for records I don’t remember buying. I’m now pretty sure it’s a side effect of my new ADHD meds, but it hasn’t been enough of a problem for me to want to do something. It’s like a little gift from myself, and even my subconscious self is aware enough to keep to a certain budget.

Well, usually anyway. I got some money for Christmas that Sleepytime Nat has decided should be used to splurge, and he bought two pretty pricey records—that I’ve never listened to, mind you—in the last couple weeks that have raised my eyebrow.

The real problem is though…it’d be a lot harder to be mad at him if he didn’t have such great taste. One record was Loss, by the excellent British post-metal band Pijn, and the other was this: Common Era by Belong.

Belong was, by all metrics, an ambient drone band. They had released a number of largely formless texture experiments a lá Brian Eno that were well received. Then, after a three year absence, they released a shoegaze record, complete vocals and pulsing drum machines. However, the songs aren’t too much more coherent than their other work.

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Record #965: bdrmm – Bedroom (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Any sort of appeal to nostalgia has a fair amount of revisionism. The real life nuance that marked an era is too detailed for contemporary acolytes to keep track of, so they opt instead for broad strokes and general shapes. The shoegaze revival of the last several years is especially guilty of this, whittling down the (actually quite diverse) scene of the late ’80s and early 90s into a few landmark albums and a couple combinations of effects pedals.

But when you’re studying Loveless and Souvlaki for inspiration, you might miss that shoegaze was initially an offshoot of post punk and goth, using a vibrant color palette of pinks and violets to fill in the gloomy, monochromatic sparseness of their antecedents.

You can make solid shoegaze without diving too deep into that history. But when a band looks to the same influences as the shoegaze heroes of old, something special happens.

For instance, Bedroom by the British outfit bdrmm, which captures the dreamy landscapes of shoegaze while exercising a simplicity that feels more Joy Division than My Bloody Valentine.

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Record #951: Cocteau Twins – The Pink Opaque (1986)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

If I may allow another exception to my general dislike of compilations…

The last week or two, I’ve been in a strange loop, ping-ponging between Cocteau Twins, the Cure, and Siouxsie & the Banshees (who I’m a new fan of) with a newfound appreciation for the tangled web that led from post-punk and goth to dream pop and shoegaze.

Cocteau Twins are probably the biggest lynchpin in that chain. From their earliest incarnation as gloomy goths, they embraced the romantic filigree of the genre and brought it out of the shadows.  While much of this transmutation can be traced through their full lengths, the (several!) EPs and singles released between albums offer important context to the steps along the way.

The Pink Opaque, released following the popularity of “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” on American college radio, was compiled to give their new American audience a taste of their career up until that point. Decades beyond that purpose, the disc serves as a beautiful chronicle of their metamorphosis.

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Record #950: Cocteau Twins – Head Over Heels (1983)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

There’s never been another band quite like Cocteau Twins. Not before, not since. Still, for all of their idiosyncrasies and obscurity, they cast a long shadow. Their influence can be heard in bands like Sigur Ros, My Bloody Valentine, Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins, and the legions of acts that those bands influenced.

But Cocteau Twins didn’t become Cocteau Twins™ out of the gate. The ethereal dream pop giants cut their teeth in the post punk and goth scene of the early ’80s before becoming untethered in the clouds (Elizabeth Fraser notably has a Siouxsie and the Banshees tattoo on one arm). And while their debut Garlands received plenty of praise in the post punk scene, Head Over Heels is where they start to pupate into something entirely unique.

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Record #949: The Cure – Standing On a Beach (1986)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I usually don’t put much stock in compilations. Most of them are cash grabs aimed at casual fans, and as someone who prefers to listen to songs in the context of their album, they offer little value to me.

There are, however, some exceptions. For instance, if a band has released a significant number of non-album singles—especially if those singles were as formative to the band’s career as The Cure’s non-album singles were.

While Standing On a Beach was, in fact, intended to introduce American fans to the Cure’s back catalog after the success of The Head on the Door, it remains the best collection of the singles that had a huge impact on their career despite never appearing on an album—even more than Japanese Whispers or 2001’s Greatest Hits, making it an essential bit of Cure history.

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Record #940: IST IST – Protagonists (2023)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Let’s talk about evolution for a second. As times change, organisms must adapt. These tiny adaptations build up over eons to create totally new lifeforms.

Musically though, that happens on a much smaller scale. A Mesazoic worth of evolution might happen in a decade, with primitive genres becoming more advanced and converging to form antecedents that bear little resemblance to their forebears.

But just as some lifeforms perpetuate for millions of years without much variation, some genres were perfectly adapted from their conception. Take for instance post punk, which has swum on the last few decades like a shark: its unblinking gaze, jagged teeth, and menacing presence as fit a metaphor for the sounds of the genre as any I can think of.

Manchester post punkers IST IST understand this, offering an album that delivers a brand of icy post punk that’s as close to the scene’s origins as any I’ve heard in the last few years.

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Record #931: Lesser Care – Underneath, Beside Me (2022)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

It doesn’t seem like post-punk and hardcore would have much to do with one another. Besides both being offshoots of punk, they went in very different directions. Post-punk took a more cerebral approach to punk’s minimalism, while hardcore turned up the volume and the violence. To anthropomorphize them a bit, if you took them to a party, post-punk would spend the night leaning against the wall and silently people-watching while hardcore would be drunkenly rough-housing.

But despite the disparate gaps in personality and ethos, there is a common ground to be found. Take for instance El Paso newcomers Lesser Care, whose debut combines the insular, brooding aloofness of post-punk with a pent-up aggression that is palpably a few moments away from bursting.

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Record #911: Fotoform – Horizons (2021)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As a music reviewer, my inbox is constantly bombarded with press packs. The unfortunate truth is that most of this goes ignored, buried amid the insurmountable pile of album streams and press releases.

But every once in a while, something will leap from the murky stream of promos and glisten like an iridescent marlin in the sun, catching my attention and holding it. A couple years ago, one of those records was Horizons, the sophomore record of Seattle’s Fotoform, a shining bit of post-punky shoegaze that’s as emotionally stirring as it is urgent.

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Record #909: The Cure – Seventeen Seconds (1980)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Everyone has to start somewhere. For the Cure, that somewhere was Three Imaginary Boys, a charming if inauspicious collection of Buzzcocks-y songs that was more Pablo Honey than Are You Experienced, even if they did sneak the world’s weirdest Jimi Hendrix song onto it. The release was largely ignored until the later single “Boys Don’t Cry,” after which their debut was rereleased with a different track listing that included that hit.

But then two important things happened. First, the Cure toured with labelmates and goth pioneers Siouxsie and the Banshees, for whom Robert Smith even filled in on guitar after their guitarist quit midtour.

Second, they added bassist Simon Gallup to the band. While bassists are often overlooked, Gallup brought a brooding drive to the band’s rhythm section that would go on to be a major part of the group’s sound, and was a big part of why this is the first record in the group’s catalog where the Cure starts to feel like the Cure™.

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Record #906: The Cure – Bloodflowers (2000)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

Let me start by explaining that my recent Cure obsession isn’t totally aimless: my podcast cohost and I decided to take an episode to do a deep dive through the legendary Goths’ discography—a daunting task for anyone, but especially for someone who had largely ignored their legacy for most of their life (namely, me).

While I’d already spent a decent amount of time with some of their most celebrated releases, I set off to familiarize myself with everything I was unfamiliar with. I’ve spent the last couple weeks binging their albums, reading Wikipedia and album reviews like I was cramming for college finals, and filling in the gaps in my Cure collection.

One thing that I learned during this time is that usually, the general consensus about each Cure album is mostly trustworthy. If an album is good, everyone says it’s good. If it’s bad, everyone says it’s bad.

But there is one blindingly glaring exception to that rule: 2000s Bloodflowers, a brilliant and understated record that is almost universally maligned. And while I’ll admit that its artwork does it no favors, this is one case where the collective music historian consciousness is very mistaken.

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