Bete Noir of the Year 2021 - Post Punk

 

I like Post Punk. At least if you're talking about the original thing. PiL, The Fall, Gang of Four, Joy Division, Echo & the Bunnymen, The Specials, (yes I'd include them). Wire, Pere Ubu and Television, the three bands who might be classified as simply Punk bands, but who offered a way out of its potential cul de sacs. There was a darkness about pretty much all of this music. But then again those were dark times.

These are dark times but I have a much greater problem with what is generally and rather lazily called Modern Post Punk in 2021. That generally means Black Country New Road, Black Midi, Squid, Dry Cleaning, IDLES and the like. Many of them among 2021's most lauded bands and producers of many of 2021's most lauded records.

They almost all leave me quite cold. Whereas the original crop of great Post Punk records were cold and bleak records that made you feel warm these are cold records that leave me at least feeling cold and certainly yearning to listen to something else.

Many of these bands centre round a scene that's emerged in the last couple of years around The Brixton Windmill. While it's heartening to see any 'new scene' emerge, it's tempting to think of such things as a thing of the past in music though of course they never truly will be. It's slightly depressing though to see one so mired in the past, and a past where so many much better records were made than these bands seem capable of making.

The one band at least loosely connected to this scene, (they've certainly played  at The Brixton Windmill a few times over the last few years), who I am genuinely interested in, are Goat Girl who released a fabulous second album, On All Fours early in 2021. They don't seem to have received the credit they deserve for this fine, textured record. You can't hear much of The Fall or Gang of Four here, bands that seem to be common denominators for most of the groups I listed a couple of paragraphs ago, along with Can, Slint and Free Jazz in certain particular cases.

On All Fours seems more indebted to Roxy Music and Warpaint than anything else, and Goat Girl are also clearly plotting their own course too as any decent young band should be. I'll be pleased to see Black Country New Road, Black Midi, Squid or Dry Cleaning make records that change my mind about them but early signs don't seem to auger well.