Recorded in Jamaica and released in 1976, Black And Blue is the Stones' first album with new guitar player Ron Wood. Sometimes overlooked, but certainly a must-have for hardcore fans. Expect an unprecedented reggae slant to most of the songs. "Fool To Cry" and "Memory Motel" are of particular interest.
Twenty-plus years after its release, Graham Parker's best record still jumps out of the speakers and demands your attention. Every song here is a marvel of lyrical inspiration and musical perspiration, from frothy rockers such as "Local Girls" to the harrowing ballad "You Can't Be Too Strong." This re-issue adds live versions of every track, in sequence, plus two covers.
Pleasure Principle is the album most Americans equate with this New Wave innovator, specifically the song "Cars," which was a moderate hit on the radio and, more significantly, a heavily-rotated video on the then-fledgling MTV network. Nobody plays New Wave robo-funk like Numan, and his early records remain, to this day, archetypal post-Bowie synth rock.
Joy Division was a superior Manchester punk band when they met producer Martin Hannett, who helped them match a darkly spacious sound and an emotional pull to already fantastic songs. Post-punk in different forms existed before Unknown Pleasures, but everything about the album, from its iconic cover design to Ian Curtis' damaged, alternately detached and deeply wounded lyrics made Joy Division a Rosetta stone for the genre. A modern classic, this takes off the second "Disorder" starts up and just keeps building with songs such as "New Dawn Fades" and "She's Lost Control" until the album practically expires with the funereal "I Remember Nothing." This remastered version of the album includes a complete 1980 concert by the band.
The bilious emotions hurtling through Elvis Costello's previous release, This Year's Model, may've taken some attention off of the consistently high level of his songwriting. The less sonically brutal Armed Forces helped change that. The album's slightly retro-futurist keyboard sound still screams "NEW WAVE!" but the stylistic underpinnings of each track show that Costello had a keen interest in pretty much every single pop form of the past. The era-defining songs include "Oliver's Army," "Accidents Will Happen," Party Girl" and "Green Shirt." Costello's third masterwork in a row, this was his only album to enter the American Top 10.
Everyone talks about discovering Iggy with the Stooges. Everyone lies. This solo platter is really the first time most people heard Iggy Pop. As streamlined and clean as Raw Power is filthy and primal, New Values was embraced by the punk/New Wave movement, while "I'm Bored" and "Five Foot One" were played on FM classic rock radio.
On the Police's sophomore effort, Reggatta de Blanc, the band sound sharper and more assured of themselves. Future classics "Walking On the Moon," "Message In a Bottle," and "The Bed's Too Big Without You" makes this album difficult to resist, ranking it second only to their hits collections or Zenyatta Mondatta.
While the Police were already huge in Britain, it took this 1980 release to finally break them in America. Songs like "Don't Stand So Close to Me" and "Shadows in the Rain" brought a new sense of lurking dread to their lean reggae/new wave sound, while "Driven to Tears" previews the more mature work that was to just around the corner. "When the World is Running Down..." may be the single best song on this classic album.
Over 20 years after its release, it's clear that this is more than just a ska revival milestone. At once a vivid portrait of late-'70s British malaise and a timeless piece of music, the disc is a genuine classic, and its energetic updating of Caribbean sounds still feels fresh today. Every track is perfect.
Many forward-thinking releases are so unique it takes years for audiences to catch up with them. A weird thing happened with this 1980 Talking Heads classic -- nobody had ever heard anything quite like Remain In Light yet the masses immediately loved it. The amazing best-selling mix of African and funk rhythms, urban paranoia, new wave rock, intellect and heart features songs that have not aged a nanosecond. How on fire were the Talking Heads during this era? They crafted “The Overload” after reading about what Joy Division sounded like in a music magazine!
Bowie's bizarrely underrated travelogue of moonlit beaches, lush jungles and scarred emotional landscapes. Both the European hit "D.J." and the louder-than-punk storm swirling behind "Boys Keep Swinging" are still ahead of the sound curve.
Way before "Love Shack" permeated the staff party circuit, the B-52's were one of the coolest, weirdest bands to come out of the New Wave explosion. This album proves it. It's not all beehives and kitsch -- there are some seriously great surf/go-go/punk-pop songs here. "52 Girls" is probably their best moment ever. There's also that song about the lobster.
Perfect pop/rock tunes topped off with a detached New Wave perspective make this a great debut in the same way that the first Boston and Ramones albums are (everything that The Cars did after this refined the same formula). Not a big initial hit in 1978, The Cars continued selling throughout the '80s, bridging the gap between classic rockers, New Wavers, and the general public. After a couple of years everything single song on here charted, Folks.
Joe Jackson's lean, stripped-down New Wave debut didn't take off in his native England, but buoyed by the hit "Is She Really Going Out With Him," it took off in the States, and continued selling into the 1980s. Not a great album overall, but it contains many Jackson classics besides "Is She
," including "Sunday Papers," "One More Time" and "Fools In Love."
This is the Buzzcocks album to buy. Collecting singles from the band's first two years, these sixteen roaring, catchy songs spill into each other, resulting in one of the best Punk albums ever. Nearly all the sharp-witted, melodic songs from the late 1970s were perfect singles, with the A- and B-sides carrying equal weight.
The Cure's UK debut gets a lavish reappraisal, though most of the rarities and demos (which showcase an energetic punk band) don't deserve the red carpet treatment. Thankfully, the original album is a New Wave classic brimming over with great pop tunes. Released as the superior Boys Don't Cry in the US, it excised the weaker tracks and added key singles.
This sophomore solo set from Nick Lowe was his popular breakthrough in America, and it includes the hit single "Cruel To Be Kind," the new wave classic "Cracking Up" and the roots-rock masterclass "Without Love" (which could have been written by Buddy Holly). Lowe gets plenty of mileage out of Rockpile, his ace backing band featuring producer Dave Edmunds. Lowe's timeless songcraft and effervescent vocals kick things up a notch further. If you want to hear his future as a peerless folk crooner, check out the sublime ballad "You Make Me."
After the critical success of his debut, Elvis Costello got the Attractions together and recorded what many consider his finest effort. Meaner and harder than his debut -- everything sounds oddly threatening -- This Year's Model still brims over with intelligence, melody, dark humor, quotable lyrics and jittery new wave vibes. The jerky classic "Pump It Up" earned some FM radio airplay in America, and the album's stature would only grow throughout the 1980s. This deluxe edition features a ream of B-sides, rarities, demos and a bonus disc with a complete 1978 concert.
The worst thing you can say about Devo's sophomore release is that it suffers next to their brilliant debut. Duty has more synths and less punk bite than before, but there's an even stronger sense of humor/irony/anger on New Wave classics such as "Wiggly World," "Blockhead" and "S.I.B." Smart and fun, Devo also rocked way more than maybe even they wanted to admit.
The Damned regrouped in 1979 without Brian James and released one of the greatest punk records of all time. Dave Vanian, Captain Sensible and Rat Scabies shared creative control and came up with a rich and stylistically diverse set of songs that walk a tightrope between being fun throwaways and serious rock classics. It's hard to get better than "Love Song," "I Just Can't Be Happy Today," "Melody Lee," "Smash It Up" and the MC5 cover "Looking at You." Take out the "punk" tag and just consider Machine Gun Etiquette as one of the best rock 'n' roll records, period.
After a four-year hiatus, the band regrouped to cut this fluid meeting of art pop and disco-fied rock. "Dance Away" was a deserved pop hit, while the title track and "Stronger Through the Years" influenced the Post-Punk and the Neuro movements even as the band was "selling out." Roxy Music were always about selling out; this is just when the concept caught up with them.
Bowie somehow brilliantly balances sleek alternative pop ("Fashion" and "Ashes to Ashes") with jagged, brittle and often madly paranoid art rock. The guitar buzz on this album still has the power to astound while the lyrics, (with the exception of the fragilely optimistic "Up the Hill Backwards") speak of hopes dashed in a world gone horribly wrong.
Well-titled, Tension would be the band's swan song (at least until they reformed, years later). While it doesn't match their previous efforts, the Buzzcocks still went out on top. Pete Shelley's way of spinning classic pop hooks through driving punk is augmented by an even more up-front art rock experimentalism. Shelley's sensitive worldview finds its summation on "I Don't Know What to Do With My Life," and the brilliant "I Believe, which spews out acres of dogma before delivering the mantra: "There is no love in this world anymore!"
Originally titled Metal Box because of its unwieldy packaging, Second Edition is seen by many as PIL's artistic high-water mark and as the kickoff to the post-punk movement. An endlessly unsettling batch of songs that combine German art rock with Jamaican dub and the freakiest set of vocals John Lydon's ever delivered. Essential un-EZ listening.
The Jam continued to grow sonically, expanding out from their core trio on this LP culled from an aborted rock opera about friends confronting the loss of youthful enthusiasm and idealism ("Burning Sky," "Thick as Thieves," "Wasteland"). Elsewhere, excoriating cuts like "Private Hell" and "Saturday's Kids" paint beautifully bleak portraits of both ends of the generation gap while "Eton Rifles" and "Little Boy Soldier" are political rock epics. Weller's reputation as a songwriter was assured, but bassist Bruce Foxton's "Smithers-Jones" is a highlight and fan-favorite.
Released in 1979, Replicas was where Numan began to fully develop his robotic, disconnected stance. The drum-driven tracks are augmented by quavering synthlines that still sound otherworldly, albeit more retro-futuristic than futuristic. "Are 'Friends' Electric?" was one of the best tracks to come out of the New Wave explosion, and it still sounds incredible.
One of the greatest rock debuts ever remains enchantingly entertaining. "Teenage Kicks" is widely considered one of the best pop tunes of all time, but the whole album is loaded with catchy punk gems to such an extent that fans undervalue the band's subsequent LPs. The CD reissue offers a mess of bonus cuts, including a superior version of "True Confessions."
Angry? Bitter? Inhaled so much drugs and whiskey that your voice is like the sound of sandpaper on baby skin? Marianne Faithfull is the baddest girl that ever lived. Broken English, the unblinking flip side to the Stones' Black and Blue, should be listened to with care. "Why'd Ya Do It" is the perfect song for that person in your life who deserves to die.
For this 1979 album, XTC lost founding member Barry Andrews (later to join Shriekback) and gained a second guitarist with Dave Gregory. The result was one of the finest moments of their early years. Including both "Making Plans For Nigel" and "Life Begins At The Hop", this album really shows that XTC were not about to be contained by post-punk minimalism alone.
