This is very much a blur zone. Unlike the Gothic Music that we reviewed earlier, there are many misinterpretations on the term: Post-Punk.
Let’s Take a Look:
There are some individuals out there mistaking Free Jazz, Noise-Rock, Grunge or even Shoegaze with Post-Punk and forget about the amazing legacy that Ian Curtis and Mark E. Smith left behind. When the twenty first century broke in we were still shaking loose from the last nu-metal bands which were kind of a bummer. Although that was the scenario, some amazing records were made.
Savages
This band has a band that was formed in London in 2011 and changed the way most of us thought about music post-millennium with their amazing debut album “Silence Yourself”. It claims, the album itself that it should be listened to loud in the background while doing something else. I is not in the party mood to amuse all your friends, but it really is a deep, expressive, take-no-prisoners album that maintains a dark, tight, beautifully grotesque atmosphere throughout it. The amazing voice of Jenny Beth is hypnotic. The spoken sequence in “Shut Up” leaves you thinking for a while.
Vaura
This band is a bit more modern, a bit noisier, but just as powerful as Savages. They have a voice that is a little more effect-driven and buried in a mix of guitars that feels more asphyxiating than the airy Savages mix. The music is more riff-driven than voice driven, and the drummer is out of this world. There is a violence element present in their music along or behind the melody that is simply astonishing. Vaura is a great act formed in New York in 2009 and has released two records: “Selenelion” (2012) and “The Missing” (2013). The second record features a song named “Incomplete Burning” that can really make a great impression of what kind of band you will find when you hear them.
Ought
This is a Canadian band from Montreal that takes on a mix of Mark and Ian over gentle, beautiful melodies. It just formed in 2011 and their debut album “More Than Any Other Day” came out in 2014, then came “Sun Coming Down” in 2015 and finally “Room Inside the World” this year. The vocals and the appearance of Tim Darcy set them apart from the industry standard just like Tim Keen´s drumming which is absolutely hypnotic and amazing. It is great how they handle dynamics in a way that makes you dive into the records fully; you never know what he is going to do next! This band was one of my great discoveries and I´m glad I can share it with you.
Algiers
This band has received as many labels as a band can humanly receive mainly because they do blend all the things that come into their heads at once. They have a strong political message in their lyrics and blend industrial with gospel as if it was any Tuesday afternoon that Martin Luther King shook hands with Sister Rosetta Tharpe and joined for tea with Mark E. Smith. They have this amazing histrionic singer named Franklin James Fisher (who also plays guitar eventually). Their homonymous first album came out in 2015 and was followed by “The Underside of Power” in 2017. Both albums came out through the great label Matador Records, responsible for putting out some of the greatest records of the alternative bands that I like the most in the history of music.
As much as
I love the music
I used to hear in my wild years, I have to say that there is a lot of new, amazing, powerful music being made out there right now that deserves to be heard. It is something to point out that with the ease of getting recording equipment and erasing intermediaries, most bands can go from rehearsal to first record without signing with a label. There are no boundaries in terms of whose music is on Spotify, YouTube, Bandcamp, Soundcloud and all those amazing new digital platforms. It is a great time to be a post-punk musician.