Late eighties, if you went to Berkeley or anywhere in the San Francisco Bay area, the record shops had the "alternative" section. It was often a catchall label for punk and anything afterwards. Talking Heads is an interesting creature to me: it went from proto to postpunk w/o touching punk much.
I had a great time reading your post — I really liked how honestly you talk about how slippery and intimidating post-punk becomes the moment you try to pin it down. I think you’re right that it wasn’t a clean evolutionary step after punk, but something that coexisted with it and reacted to it in real time. From what I’ve seen, the lines between proto-punk, punk and post-punk were already pretty blurred by the late ’70s, and “post-punk” itself feels more like a retrospective label than a precise category.
I also appreciated the way you framed post-punk less as a sound and more as an approach. The emphasis on bass, space, tension, deadpan vocals and non-traditional structures lines up closely with how the genre is usually talked about by historians and musicians. It really does help explain how bands as different as Bauhaus, The Smiths, Talking Heads or ESG can all live under the same loose umbrella.
The only place I felt a bit differently — and this is more a nuance than a real disagreement — is the idea of new wave growing out of disco. From what I’ve read, new wave feels less like a direct descendant of disco and more like a parallel label that emerged alongside post-punk, often overlapping with it and sometimes working as a more marketable tag. That overlap probably explains why albums like Unknown Pleasures keep getting pulled into both camps decades later.
I also wonder if the idea that post-punk “intellectualized” punk, while useful, can sometimes sound a little cleaner than reality. Some artists were clearly engaging with theory, art schools or literature — but others just seemed to be pushing punk’s limits instinctively, experimenting with texture, rhythm and mood rather than making an explicitly academic move.
That said, I think your broader point really lands: post-punk’s boundaries were never clean, its subgenres co-evolved, and that messiness is part of why it’s still so alive today. Framing the current revival around shared sensibilities rather than strict lineage feels like the right call. This felt like a thoughtful way to acknowledge the chaos without pretending it can be neatly solved.
i agree with you on all those fronts. I've mentioned elsewhere that the idea the new wave reacting to disco was something that I heard from another critic (somebody much more researched than me) that really helped me understand the era, so I shared it here, but ultimately it's reductive and incomplete just like most of the takes that I've shared here. it's helpful in some ways and harmful in others. just like with the idea of post punk being intellectual, it's convenient short hand that doesn't really do justice to what was actually happening. but i just don't have it in me (and I'm not the right person!) to do that full on analysis. so these shortcuts I think will suffice for the casual listener and amateur (in the real sense of the word,I mean. the lover of the music who isn't professional). i don't think either claim was flat out wrong but yes I do agree there's much more to it.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond — I really appreciate it. That makes a lot of sense, especially the idea of these framings as useful shortcuts rather than definitive explanations. I think that awareness comes through in the post, and it’s part of what makes it approachable without pretending to solve something that messy. Totally get that doing the full, exhaustive analysis isn’t the point (or even possible), and I think this works really well for curious listeners who just love the music. Thanks again for the thoughtful reply.
I hate having to describe/explain post-punk to people so my go to is always something along the lines of ‘just go listen to Joy Division’. But not Warsaw because them as Warsaw is, in my eyes at least, them testing the waters as a punk(ish) band.
I also can’t keep up with all the sub-genres of new wave- like I do not know (or necessarily care?) what defines dark-wave vs. cold-wave vs. death-wave vs. (insert another random adjective) wave. All I care about is whether or not the music speaks to me.
Definitely chuckled at The Smiths being called post-punk- I’ve always considered them indie 🙃.
but why can't indie be post-punk? why are they mutually exclusive genres? any music can be indie, technically speaking. and all of the "wave" genres you mentioned are arguably post-punk subgenres rather than new wave genres. I'm not here to argue that personally but I've seen that fight unfold before, much to my amusement. i kind of think genre labeling is useless if it isn't helping you understand what something sounds like! (p.s. the smiths are for sure jangle pop! ;) )
I’ve even heard the Drive-by-Truckers (who I love) as “country post-punk”, and Jerry Joseph and the Jack Mormons in the same way. Maybe it’s as much an attitude as it is the style of music they play.
And, btw, I’ve ALWAYS thought that “new wave” was just repackaged disco, as they had to label it this way because of the bad rap “disco” had by the end of the 70s. That said, there is some “disco” that was amazing as it bled into jazz and funk, Donna Sumner being a prime example.
RE ‘why can’t indie be post-punk?’ Your guess is as good as mine. For me, when I was introduced to The Smiths, they were described to me as an indie band so that’s what I went with. I personally find many people get stuck on genre types/labels and then become gatekeepers. I am not a music historian nor do I have much interest in arguing the merits of which bands define specific genres which is why I usually stay in my lane and just focus on the music that speaks to me.
I thought of the Smiths as twee, which muddies the waters because (a) that’s a very imperfect description of their work and (b) where does twee fit into the punk/post-punk etc discourse?
If art-pop is a genre, I guess it'd be something like that. Sting, Talking Heads, Eurythmics, St. Vincent that kind of thing. Lots of fun musical complexity to dive into.
Imagine the post punk venn diagram 🤔 My favourite band are The Associates. Dramatic, cinematic soundscapes inspired by Bowie, Roxy Music with a punk ethos. All created by a musical renegade and a vocalist with a range as wide as any. Yet, they are labelled post punk. Yours is a fabulous attempt at unraveling this conundrum but I fear it is an impossible task.
So while my brain is imploding, this comes at just the right time as I’m reading Kim Gordon’s autobiography. Arriving in NYC, she talks up the “No Wave” scene, which is defined how and where in the timeline of at all? And then, loosely interpreted on my part, she and SY start as punk but quickly become more intellectual in their approach and… so evolve into post punk? If I’m understanding your description definition properly, that’s my conclusion. But SY stays dissonant and bass heavy, which infers they skipped the New Wave trend. At least up to the halfway point of the book where SY is performing with California punk acts like Black Flag. Am I on the right track here?
This is such a swirling caldron of influences and split hairs that a casual punk fan like me has a hard time breaking it down. I can only imagine the Venn Diagram. 😵💫
swirling cauldron is right!! i think early sonic youth is def no wave. they are not new wave, but are post-punk, squarely in the NYC cadre which is where no wave was born. i didn't discuss that genre at all because it's way too much to get into here. (to be fair i also didn't get into any punk at all here except the tiniest reference to the sex pistols!)
i would say that the US bands who got classified as both post-punk and new wave are a lot more obvious: Devo, B52s, Talking Heads. you can really hear the pop in those groups. but there's no implication that new wave was a required rite of passage for any band, if that makes sense. it's not like gang of four or the fall would ever get confused for new wave, right?
Sonic Youth gets classed as noise more than anything (I think!) these days.
Luke Haines, in Freaks Out! claims there's no such thing as post punk, and he has a point. The Krautrock bands were making post punk music in the early 70's (listen to Trap by Amon Duul II) and you could also call early Roxy Music post punk if it had been made 10 years later.
I feel like genre tags can sometimes be industry driven more than an attempt to help people understand what something sounds like. Grunge is an example of what I mean. Yes, Nirvana, Sound Garden, and Pearl Jam all broke at more or less the same time and yes they are all from Seattle, but lumping them into one genre helps no one. Influence is always going to come through if you imitate it, but what if you choose to turn it inside out, or blow it out so hard your sound is nothing like your influence? For me, I don't typically use genre as a means of describing music because it is so fuzzy. Post punk as a label contains both everything and nothing because nearly all of it can be claimed by some other genre tag.
totally agree. grunge is something I refuse to take on completely. the gatekeepers there are even worse than for post-punk, which is saying a lot. and there's even less definitive about the sound despite the name seeming so clear.
To me, the angular guitar work is the most identifiable aspect of music that sounds like it should be called post punk. But what makes it sound angular? Maybe jarring/stop-and-start rhythms, minimal distortion, and non-blues-based chord progressions?
also that the notes/chords jump sharply. it wasn't actually until I really paid attention to how Annie Clark plays that this sunk in for me, but interestingly her music isn't truly post-punk revival (I guess it does fit some other characteristics though!)
That's a good one. In concert music that's loosely associated with Germanic composers, vs Italians who are more melodic. (Like post punk, this is all very loosey goosey.) One explanation is this it reflects the sounds of their languages.
Another thing I've been thinking about is when we append 'post' onto a genre. Punk, hardcore, modern, malone, etc. Seems like it generally means they are shedding constraints the appended genre usually holds to, in some ways adding complexity
Brave and fairly thorough attempt - kudos! I don't agree with 100% Of what you say here, but as you basically said, if you ask a hundred music critics what post punk is, you'll get a hundred answers.
one of the biggest reasons I was so scared of making this post is that I was pretty much guaranteed to get eviscerated in the comments. it was all I could do not to make the entire post one giant footnote (I basically did anyway).
television is categorized as post-punk as often as it's categorized as proto-punk.
new wave also reacted to punk, not disco.
i left out countless important historical data points and connections.
and so on and so on, infinitely.
i just needed to get the foundation in there so the new music recommendations made sense! ;)
We are very lucky here in Ireland and please dont get me wrong I love U2 who's debut album Boy would match what you are talking about but we now have a music scene where bands arent referred to as the next u2. You mentioned Fontaines, The Murder Capital and Sprints but now can add Gurriers, New Dad, Just Mustard, Thumper, Bleech 9'3, Cardinals and if you are looking for something that crosses The Pogues and Lankum check out Madrach Salach they are phenomenal, and will be big
Ireland has an incredible post punk scene. I've recommended many of the bands you've listed and more (NewDad and Just Mustard I would class more as shoegaze but man they are just great aren't they? And Gurriers, Gilla Band, M(h)aol, all amazing). Thank you for the recs, please keep them coming.
I've been having this discussion about post-punk with myself for sometime now. The pedant in me keeps saying that everything after that first punk wave is, of course, post. But I also feel like I can recognize a sound as distinctly post punk but I didn't have the musical vocabulary that you used to help describe it. Thank you. I'm sharing with all of my music nerd friends.
i learned a lot but i'm still confused
Caroline that's because I taught you nothing and also none of this is real
Late eighties, if you went to Berkeley or anywhere in the San Francisco Bay area, the record shops had the "alternative" section. It was often a catchall label for punk and anything afterwards. Talking Heads is an interesting creature to me: it went from proto to postpunk w/o touching punk much.
I had a great time reading your post — I really liked how honestly you talk about how slippery and intimidating post-punk becomes the moment you try to pin it down. I think you’re right that it wasn’t a clean evolutionary step after punk, but something that coexisted with it and reacted to it in real time. From what I’ve seen, the lines between proto-punk, punk and post-punk were already pretty blurred by the late ’70s, and “post-punk” itself feels more like a retrospective label than a precise category.
I also appreciated the way you framed post-punk less as a sound and more as an approach. The emphasis on bass, space, tension, deadpan vocals and non-traditional structures lines up closely with how the genre is usually talked about by historians and musicians. It really does help explain how bands as different as Bauhaus, The Smiths, Talking Heads or ESG can all live under the same loose umbrella.
The only place I felt a bit differently — and this is more a nuance than a real disagreement — is the idea of new wave growing out of disco. From what I’ve read, new wave feels less like a direct descendant of disco and more like a parallel label that emerged alongside post-punk, often overlapping with it and sometimes working as a more marketable tag. That overlap probably explains why albums like Unknown Pleasures keep getting pulled into both camps decades later.
I also wonder if the idea that post-punk “intellectualized” punk, while useful, can sometimes sound a little cleaner than reality. Some artists were clearly engaging with theory, art schools or literature — but others just seemed to be pushing punk’s limits instinctively, experimenting with texture, rhythm and mood rather than making an explicitly academic move.
That said, I think your broader point really lands: post-punk’s boundaries were never clean, its subgenres co-evolved, and that messiness is part of why it’s still so alive today. Framing the current revival around shared sensibilities rather than strict lineage feels like the right call. This felt like a thoughtful way to acknowledge the chaos without pretending it can be neatly solved.
i agree with you on all those fronts. I've mentioned elsewhere that the idea the new wave reacting to disco was something that I heard from another critic (somebody much more researched than me) that really helped me understand the era, so I shared it here, but ultimately it's reductive and incomplete just like most of the takes that I've shared here. it's helpful in some ways and harmful in others. just like with the idea of post punk being intellectual, it's convenient short hand that doesn't really do justice to what was actually happening. but i just don't have it in me (and I'm not the right person!) to do that full on analysis. so these shortcuts I think will suffice for the casual listener and amateur (in the real sense of the word,I mean. the lover of the music who isn't professional). i don't think either claim was flat out wrong but yes I do agree there's much more to it.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond — I really appreciate it. That makes a lot of sense, especially the idea of these framings as useful shortcuts rather than definitive explanations. I think that awareness comes through in the post, and it’s part of what makes it approachable without pretending to solve something that messy. Totally get that doing the full, exhaustive analysis isn’t the point (or even possible), and I think this works really well for curious listeners who just love the music. Thanks again for the thoughtful reply.
I hate having to describe/explain post-punk to people so my go to is always something along the lines of ‘just go listen to Joy Division’. But not Warsaw because them as Warsaw is, in my eyes at least, them testing the waters as a punk(ish) band.
I also can’t keep up with all the sub-genres of new wave- like I do not know (or necessarily care?) what defines dark-wave vs. cold-wave vs. death-wave vs. (insert another random adjective) wave. All I care about is whether or not the music speaks to me.
Definitely chuckled at The Smiths being called post-punk- I’ve always considered them indie 🙃.
but why can't indie be post-punk? why are they mutually exclusive genres? any music can be indie, technically speaking. and all of the "wave" genres you mentioned are arguably post-punk subgenres rather than new wave genres. I'm not here to argue that personally but I've seen that fight unfold before, much to my amusement. i kind of think genre labeling is useless if it isn't helping you understand what something sounds like! (p.s. the smiths are for sure jangle pop! ;) )
I’ve even heard the Drive-by-Truckers (who I love) as “country post-punk”, and Jerry Joseph and the Jack Mormons in the same way. Maybe it’s as much an attitude as it is the style of music they play.
And, btw, I’ve ALWAYS thought that “new wave” was just repackaged disco, as they had to label it this way because of the bad rap “disco” had by the end of the 70s. That said, there is some “disco” that was amazing as it bled into jazz and funk, Donna Sumner being a prime example.
RE ‘why can’t indie be post-punk?’ Your guess is as good as mine. For me, when I was introduced to The Smiths, they were described to me as an indie band so that’s what I went with. I personally find many people get stuck on genre types/labels and then become gatekeepers. I am not a music historian nor do I have much interest in arguing the merits of which bands define specific genres which is why I usually stay in my lane and just focus on the music that speaks to me.
I thought of the Smiths as twee, which muddies the waters because (a) that’s a very imperfect description of their work and (b) where does twee fit into the punk/post-punk etc discourse?
and then the jangle vs twee debate starts
“Just go listen to Joy Division” (or early Wire) is a great way to frame it!
Love the Sweeping Promises s/o! I get “Pain Without a Touch” stuck in my head at least once a week.
If art-pop is a genre, I guess it'd be something like that. Sting, Talking Heads, Eurythmics, St. Vincent that kind of thing. Lots of fun musical complexity to dive into.
art pop is definitely a genre!
Imagine the post punk venn diagram 🤔 My favourite band are The Associates. Dramatic, cinematic soundscapes inspired by Bowie, Roxy Music with a punk ethos. All created by a musical renegade and a vocalist with a range as wide as any. Yet, they are labelled post punk. Yours is a fabulous attempt at unraveling this conundrum but I fear it is an impossible task.
i feel i don't deserve your praise, and yet here i am. taking it!
So while my brain is imploding, this comes at just the right time as I’m reading Kim Gordon’s autobiography. Arriving in NYC, she talks up the “No Wave” scene, which is defined how and where in the timeline of at all? And then, loosely interpreted on my part, she and SY start as punk but quickly become more intellectual in their approach and… so evolve into post punk? If I’m understanding your description definition properly, that’s my conclusion. But SY stays dissonant and bass heavy, which infers they skipped the New Wave trend. At least up to the halfway point of the book where SY is performing with California punk acts like Black Flag. Am I on the right track here?
This is such a swirling caldron of influences and split hairs that a casual punk fan like me has a hard time breaking it down. I can only imagine the Venn Diagram. 😵💫
swirling cauldron is right!! i think early sonic youth is def no wave. they are not new wave, but are post-punk, squarely in the NYC cadre which is where no wave was born. i didn't discuss that genre at all because it's way too much to get into here. (to be fair i also didn't get into any punk at all here except the tiniest reference to the sex pistols!)
i would say that the US bands who got classified as both post-punk and new wave are a lot more obvious: Devo, B52s, Talking Heads. you can really hear the pop in those groups. but there's no implication that new wave was a required rite of passage for any band, if that makes sense. it's not like gang of four or the fall would ever get confused for new wave, right?
Sonic Youth gets classed as noise more than anything (I think!) these days.
Ha! Ok vi think I’m catching on. Thanks!
Luke Haines, in Freaks Out! claims there's no such thing as post punk, and he has a point. The Krautrock bands were making post punk music in the early 70's (listen to Trap by Amon Duul II) and you could also call early Roxy Music post punk if it had been made 10 years later.
i've heard this argument and i kind of agree.
"I bet you can name at least one other album that has been called both post-punk and new wave at some point."
Anything by the "big 4" (my own designation) -- New Order, The Cure, Depeche, The Smiths -- at least up until (some) got too poppy.
I feel like genre tags can sometimes be industry driven more than an attempt to help people understand what something sounds like. Grunge is an example of what I mean. Yes, Nirvana, Sound Garden, and Pearl Jam all broke at more or less the same time and yes they are all from Seattle, but lumping them into one genre helps no one. Influence is always going to come through if you imitate it, but what if you choose to turn it inside out, or blow it out so hard your sound is nothing like your influence? For me, I don't typically use genre as a means of describing music because it is so fuzzy. Post punk as a label contains both everything and nothing because nearly all of it can be claimed by some other genre tag.
totally agree. grunge is something I refuse to take on completely. the gatekeepers there are even worse than for post-punk, which is saying a lot. and there's even less definitive about the sound despite the name seeming so clear.
This is the worst, I hate it. Now do underground hip-hop.
god music is the worst. give me one person who has ever listened to it. you can't.
To me, the angular guitar work is the most identifiable aspect of music that sounds like it should be called post punk. But what makes it sound angular? Maybe jarring/stop-and-start rhythms, minimal distortion, and non-blues-based chord progressions?
also that the notes/chords jump sharply. it wasn't actually until I really paid attention to how Annie Clark plays that this sunk in for me, but interestingly her music isn't truly post-punk revival (I guess it does fit some other characteristics though!)
That's a good one. In concert music that's loosely associated with Germanic composers, vs Italians who are more melodic. (Like post punk, this is all very loosey goosey.) One explanation is this it reflects the sounds of their languages.
Another thing I've been thinking about is when we append 'post' onto a genre. Punk, hardcore, modern, malone, etc. Seems like it generally means they are shedding constraints the appended genre usually holds to, in some ways adding complexity
ESPECIALLY malone
Brave and fairly thorough attempt - kudos! I don't agree with 100% Of what you say here, but as you basically said, if you ask a hundred music critics what post punk is, you'll get a hundred answers.
one of the biggest reasons I was so scared of making this post is that I was pretty much guaranteed to get eviscerated in the comments. it was all I could do not to make the entire post one giant footnote (I basically did anyway).
television is categorized as post-punk as often as it's categorized as proto-punk.
new wave also reacted to punk, not disco.
i left out countless important historical data points and connections.
and so on and so on, infinitely.
i just needed to get the foundation in there so the new music recommendations made sense! ;)
We are very lucky here in Ireland and please dont get me wrong I love U2 who's debut album Boy would match what you are talking about but we now have a music scene where bands arent referred to as the next u2. You mentioned Fontaines, The Murder Capital and Sprints but now can add Gurriers, New Dad, Just Mustard, Thumper, Bleech 9'3, Cardinals and if you are looking for something that crosses The Pogues and Lankum check out Madrach Salach they are phenomenal, and will be big
Ireland has an incredible post punk scene. I've recommended many of the bands you've listed and more (NewDad and Just Mustard I would class more as shoegaze but man they are just great aren't they? And Gurriers, Gilla Band, M(h)aol, all amazing). Thank you for the recs, please keep them coming.
I've been having this discussion about post-punk with myself for sometime now. The pedant in me keeps saying that everything after that first punk wave is, of course, post. But I also feel like I can recognize a sound as distinctly post punk but I didn't have the musical vocabulary that you used to help describe it. Thank you. I'm sharing with all of my music nerd friends.
Awesome thanks. My knowledge ended with the Rough Trade post-punk twofer.