A commanding presence in British punk since the later 1970s, and creating out of that — along with Joy Division, The Cure, Bauhaus — an overpowering, dark music that came to be known as goth, Siouxsie and her Banshees moved their music towards romantic intoxication. Siouxsie brought light to the dark, deftly drawing rich melodies … Continue reading “Melt!” by Siouxsie and the Banshees
It’s like they couldn’t help it, all the British bands that invented themselves in the wake of the Sex Pistols. As hard as they tried not to, they created some of the loveliest pop music one can imagine, with smarts and restraint and pretension, lots of pretension. In their willful endeavor to be a serious, … Continue reading “Ocean Rain” by Echo and the Bunnymen
James Murphy made no bones about the hipster cred accorded Can on “I’m Losing My Edge,” LCD Soundsystem’s 2002 dancefloor-meets-Weird Al hit. “I was there, I was there in 1968, I was there at the first Can show in Cologne,” he sing-speaks ala King Missile, going on to target Suicide and others in the pantheon … Continue reading “How Do You Sleep” by LCD Soundsystem
Music critics tend to dismiss Joy Division’s posthumous Still as a hit-and-miss collection of studio scraps paired with a lackluster recording of their last show. And in a specific context — compared to the brilliant Unknown Pleasures and Closer, it seems a bit of a rush job with less-than-pure motivations — this holds some weight, although I’d … Continue reading “Isolation” by Joy Division
A British post-punk band could grow into just about anything in that fertile ground of the late seventies, and Japan proves the point, as over its short record-releasing career (1978-1981) the band moved from a funk punk glitz unit to new pioneers of progressive art rock. You can see the steam rising off the entire … Continue reading “Sons of Pioneers” by Japan
The figure “singing from the window in the Mission of the Sacred Heart” in ELO’s “Mission (A World Record)”, last week’s soundstreamsunday entry, could be the uptight narrator of Radiohead’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien,” from the band’s 1997 tour-de-force OK Computer. As if in mirrored conversation, those two songs, separated in time by over 20 years but … Continue reading “Subterranean Homesick Alien” by Radiohead
Again with the Eno! Always with the Eno! I’ve said it before here, but there’s no avoiding Brian Eno in any discussion of late 20th century pop and rock, and his work with the Talking Heads is just one more example of his everywhereness. Having developed a friendship with David Byrne and seeing in the … Continue reading “Born Under Punches” by Talking Heads
For the Clash there was no leaving politics off-record or offstage, and more than any of the mainstream punk or post-punk bands, except for maybe Gang of Four, they worked the seam in rock’s goldmine that pitted the disempowered and disenfranchised against authority, entitlement, and impunity. No mistake their hit cover of Bobby Fuller’s “I Fought … Continue reading “Rudie Can’t Fail” by The Clash
It’s been forty-ish years since their first record but it’s not difficult to remember how important the Cars were to American music. Punk really broke with the Cars and maybe also with Devo, because until these bands hit the radio, and they did so in a big way in 1978-79, punk music and its influence … Continue reading “Candy-O” by the Cars
The principles of exclusion, constraint, and limitation are drivers of art as much as what ends up on the canvas, and more than anything explain how U2’s “The Three Sunrises” did not make the cut of their seminal 1984 album The Unforgettable Fire. That album, their fourth, changed the band’s trajectory by broadening their palette (thus ultimately guaranteeing … Continue reading “The Three Sunrises” by U2
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