Arguably the worst fallout of the American Democratic Party’s decade of humiliation and ineptitude was the 2016 release of Le Tigre’s “I’m With Her”. To fashion the aesthetic and soul of art-punk into an establishment worshipping, pro-Hillary Clinton ‘anthem’ has banished the genre into the deepest reaches of musical hell since; every set and record must now begin with an apology and a land acknowledgment. Like a trip to KFC after eating rotten chicken, even the sound of a punk timbre over a synth has given me nausea to this day. 2026 may be a year of rekindling, as La Sécurité joins Mandy, Indiana in going ornate and reckless with the genre.
Whereas the latter’s Urgh is a masterpiece of industrial sound design and ultra-propulsive…
Category: post-punk
Thirst, originally released in 1981 is a stone-cold post-punk classic. While still retaining the sharp experimental edge of their debut, White Souls in Black Suits, Thirst stretches out and offers up some cleaner and more hooky moments as it moves away from pure improvisation. “Between White Souls and Thirst, the guitarist changed from David Hammond to Paul Widger,” explains Newton. “David introduced the perfect guitar sound for DVA, whereas Paul brought in a more rhythmic style more towards early Ry Cooder. The material we were developing was a more defined series of pieces, more structured and exact than the improvised works on White Souls.”
45 years on from its original release (on Fetish), it’s a record from the era that sounds like no other.
Following the success of 2025’s first Singles Live compilation, Popstock Records present The Fall: Singles Live Vol. Two 1980-83 in association with Bella Union. Commenting on the release Paul Hanley says: “In marked contrast to Singles Vol. One this compilation showcases an altogether more stable line-up – the one that recorded Hex Enduction Hour to be precise, notwithstanding some to-ing and fro-ing on the kit between me and Karl. As with previous releases, there are some revelatory versions here, and the mastering is a wonder to behold, or whatever the aural equivalent of ‘behold’ is. The earliest, ‘Putta Block’, from May 1980 was recorded at the Beach Club, a short-lived Manchester venue that also saw New Order’s debut gig. The latest, ‘Ludd Gang’, comes…
Since leaving Public Image Ltd, Jah Wobble has been a remarkably prolific artist. He has recently teamed up with Jon Klein, former Siouxsie and The Banshees and Specimen guitarist, for their second collaborative effort. This album is more post-punk than dub. In fact, although Jah Wobble is famous for his dub records, with Automated Paradise, he is returning to his punk roots for a brilliant album.
The title track is the closest thing to dub on the album, and it is a nice short reminder of what Wobble does and does extremely well. But with Klein in the picture, he, for the first time in years, returns to post-punk and punk. He does it with ease, with the perfect vocals and lyrics. Klein provides him the musical support, and it is full steam ahead.
Green World Image is the second album and Sub Pop debut of spirited post-punk revivalists Telehealth, a group that build on both the sound and subversion of acts like Devo and the B-52s while updating subject matter for the 2020s. Launched from the Seattle music scene by married couple Alexander Attitude and Kendra Cox, Telehealth are fleshed out by members of Slowdive, Tomten, and other indie projects. Attitude and Cox particularly evoke the B-52s at times thanks to the couple’s dual and rotating lead vocals and accented enunciation. The album begins, however, with the soothing voiceover track “[user onboarding sequence],” which asks, “What if there was a model for living that connects people, finances, nature, and technology into one seamless…
Pigeon have recorded their debut album Outtanational in Margate of all places – the once-dying seaside town that has become, in recent years, a retreat for artists like Tracey Emin and The Libertines. The choice of location means something here. Like Margate, Outtanational announces itself as something genuinely hard to pin down.
Across 10 tracks, there are elements of afro-disco, krautrock, punk-funk and post-punk. Opener “NRG” sets the tone immediately as lead vocalist and percussionist Falle Nioke sings of smoke magic and energy vampires over a groove that is fresh, fluid, and plain unpredictable. It’s an intriguing sonic stew that certainly grabs the attention.
Nioke is the heart of the record. Hailing from Guinea-Conakry, he is a member…
Cola always felt like a comedown. By the time Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy’s previous band, Ought, came to an end in 2021, the Montreal group had morphed from nervy, scrappy post-punk to grandiose art rock. Cola, formed with drummer Evan Cartwright, shifted to something stark and simple with the terse indie rock of their debut, 2022’s Deep in View and its slightly lusher follow-up, 2024’s The Gloss. On their third album, Cost of Living Adjustment, Cola have embraced, if not maximalism, then at least letting go of restraint.
The trio is still enthralled by the pointed edges of post-punk that serve as the skeleton of most of their tracks. Yet, from the moment that opener “Forced Position” kicks in, you can tell something has changed. Cartwright’s anxious…
…includes the entirety of their ‘Moderate Air Quality’ EP as bonus tracks.
The British-American poet W. H. Auden, in his poem “The Age of Anxiety” (1947), highlights humanity’s isolation in an increasingly industrialized and failing world.
Nearly 80 years later, The Sick Man of Europe is picking up the threads of the same discussion: how to navigate in a world that is diametrically opposed to our needs? How not to lose your ipseity in a data-driven culture vying for your attention? Sick Man of Europe’s eponymous debut album is an exploration of these existential matters — and more.
Yeah, the Sick Man of Europe does not shy away from fundamental issues — does he?
The third solo album by New Orleans D.I.Y. musician Urq (Spllit, W-9), This Dismal Village marks his Exploding in Sound label debut.
It’s his first to be recorded entirely on a four-track cassette Portastudio, almost ditching any digital elements in the process (although some chords from a phone app were looped into “Kings in Bed,” for instance). A dingy, lo-fi blend of playful prog-pop, druggy psychedelia, angular punk, and alternate tunings, it’s a dystopia-themed concept album that travels through time with stops in the Dark Ages, the 1950s, and the present, and each track represents a location in the village. While not recommended for those in a dour or earnest mood, cynicism is welcome.
Inspired by Shirley Jackson’s novel We Have…
Liberation Hall delivers a compelling archival release with Live ’81–’85, a double LP celebrating the legacy of Romeo Void for Record Store Day. The collection presents the band in its natural habitat on stage capturing performances across Ann Arbor, Albany, London, and Berlin.
The album functions as both a time capsule and a reaffirmation of Romeo Void’s distinct place in early 1980s new wave. Across its 17 tracks, Live ’81–’85 draws material from all phases of the band’s short but influential career, including It’s a Condition (1981), Nvr Say Nvr (1981), Benefactor (1982), and Instincts (1984). The performances feel immediate and unpolished in the best sense—raw, urgent, and driven by the band’s signature fusion of post-punk tension, saxophone accents…
Released at the end of the initial period of Wire’s 3rd Act – after Aend and before the band’s post-Bruce Gilbert re-invention – Read & Burn 03 never quite got the attention it deserved. However the opening track 23 years too late, with its tour narrative text and motorik rhythm stands as one of the band’s finest achievements of any era in the view of both core fans & the band. The original ep, 3rd in the read & burn series and the one not compiled on to the send album, was the last non-historic release by the original wire line up of colin newman, graham lewis, bruce gilbert & robert grey and has never been properly released on vinyl. The 2026 version brings the original 4 tracks and adds 3 more. While some of the tracks originated as part of the 2021-2022 sessions…
“Learn to hate in the light of day,” is the refrain from the first track of Station Model Violence’s totemic, self-titled punk record. Right off the bat, the band parlays the stakes and tone of their work, grinning their teeth through a quarter smile, but not the gums; not all of their fleshy parts displayed at once.
Whether a subconscious or overt homage to the patriarchs of post-punk, a twelve string guitar intones unceasingly, familiarly, on “Learn to Hate.” Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” — with its clanging opening 12-string and prophetic ’80s punk production — lures the listener for only so long before the synth hook snags on. The twelve string and driving beat on “Learn to Hate,” by contrast, announces that the melodic shifts…
…What makes ‘Rare & Deadly’ truly unprecedented is that every format tells a different story. The CD, cassette, vinyl, and digital editions each feature their own unique tracklisting, a fractured release strategy that is almost unheard of. No single version contains the “complete” album.
A Place to Bury Strangers return with Rare and Deadly, a collection of ‘B-sides, abandoned experiments and forgotten fragments’, pulled from front man Oliver Ackerman’s “personal archive of late night recordings, blown out tapes and half finished sessions”.
It is their first full-length release since 2024’s Synthesizer, and given the consistency of the sound and the fluency of the songwriting on the digital version, it is easy to listen to it as…
May the spring of amazing music sourced from the original UK DIY scene never run dry. Similar to other widespread, years-long U.S. macro-scene equivalents like mid-’60s garage rock or early 1980s hardcore punk, the well of UK DIY seems to be an inexhaustible resource. We owe a debt of gratitude to labels like Minimum Table Stacks, whose first foray into archiving UK DIY yielded a superb EP from long-lost Welsh group Violin Sect. It’s not an easy process tracking down band members, securing the rights, digging up unheard material, remastering the audio and presenting it with just the right amount of reverence — but not too much. After all, this cheeky, arch music was made by a generation that grew up watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus and…
The basic elements of This House’s sound will be familiar to anyone who followed G.W. Sok’s career before. A furious clangor of box-y drums, barbed wire guitar play and hoarse, poetic shouted lyrics all point towards the Ex, the long-running art-punk band that Sok left in 2008. His partner, Ignacio Córdoba, adds electronics here, in line with his own work, but the music mostly lurches and spasms with fierce, rhythmic punk intelligence. A couple of shadowy interludes — acoustic “Introduction to Poetry” and the ominous title track — hint at a less frenetic iteration of This House, but mostly these cut rattle with whip-sharp, multi-layered rhythms. Every element, not just drums, builds a beat architecture, jittery, not-quite comfortable setting for the songs.
Rennes-based, self-described feminist punk trio Île de Garde have an unusual configuration; synths (Cécile Aurégan), drums (Morgane Poulain) and low-key, mostly spoken word vocals (Klara Coudrais), but it proves to be a flexible and mostly powerful one. This six-track EP or mini album is their first release and it’s promising and varied enough to wish it was a full album, though not all its strands are equally thrilling.
Looking analytically at their songs, it becomes clear that Poulain is central to Île de Garde’s appeal. The synths are generally retro-‘80s flavored and provide the melodies, and the vocals range from delicate to imperious, but it’s the drums that seem most of all to determine the character of each song, with one exception that proves…
If you could distill the guiding philosophy of Robber Robber’s second album down to a single word, it would be the one that appears about a minute into “Avalanche Sound Effect”: “upend.”
With a frenetic, trash-can-clanging backbeat ricocheting behind her, singer and guitarist Nina Cates calmly repeats that word as if reciting her daily-affirmation mantra, transforming a word synonymous with upheaval and disorder into a source of strength and possibility.
Certainly, the Burlington, Vermont band can appreciate the value of a good coping mechanism: In January 2025, the building where Cates and drummer/partner Zack James resided caught fire. Though the couple’s apartment was spared any major structural damage, every…
Adult. have tracked the existential dread of late-stage capitalism, since Anxiety Always, but they’ve rarely done it with as much righteous anger as on Kissing Luck Goodbye. Following the more personal perspectives of Becoming Undone, Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus look outwards once again, decrying consumption, corruption, and creeping fascism as only they can. To meet the occasion, they pare down and sharpen up their music. Working with producer Nolan Gray and a new library of sounds, the duo offer some of their most cleanly recorded music with Kissing Luck Goodbye. The results, however, are far from commercial. Much like the forces they’re fighting, Adult.’s intent is disruption. “The chaos is what they want,” Kuperus growls on “R U 4 $ALE,”…
The “post-tour musings” album should be a privilege to make. It typically arrives a few years and releases into an artist’s career — that is, if they’ve been fortunate enough to be able to go out on the road. This is the very moment we find the Chicago-based trio, Stuck, in now. Off the back of 2023’s Freak Frequency, the band ventured overseas to perform their frenetic entanglement of janky post-punk guitar riffs across Europe and the UK, a prospect that’s becoming increasingly challenging for the majority of artists today. It seemed as though Stuck’s stock was rising. Therefore, it might come across as odd that within the first five minutes of their contagious new record Optimizer, we hear frontman Greg Obis exclaim, “My life was in decline!”
It’s instructive that The Twilight Sad’s first album since reducing to founding duo James Graham and Andy MacFarlane yields the most powerful version of the band’s cathartic soundworld. Perhaps the subject matter helped: It’s The Long Goodbye documents Graham losing his mother to dementia while simultaneously becoming a father, a real-life crossroads detailed with unsettling candour from the first line of the opening song (“And we slowly watch you go”).
To counterpoint the singer’s mournful Scots folk timbre, MacFarlane’s euphoric post-punk schemes roughen the shiny patina of 2019’s It Won’t Be Like This All the Time for a transcendent blend of New Order, My Bloody Valentine and, inevitably, The Cure. He’s previously covered…