1981

Now the 80s in full-swing and it's pretty weird.  Yep, it's really weird, but as always there is plenty of great music - at least 10 albums worth mentioning.  This isn't a bad year, really, but compared to the four that preceded it's pretty much garbage.  That may not be an exaggeration, but as always I stand by these ten, and considering a great album like Suburban  Lawns not making it I guess it was actually pretty competitive.

10.  The Replacement - Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash
The Minneaplois  legends make their loud, fast, and crude debut.  While many members, particularly future Guns 'N' Roses bassist Tommy Stinson are criminally underage it is still a perfect drunken mess.  Most are snotty teenage rags like "Shiftless When  Idle" and "I Hate Music," but "Something to Dü" is a great sign of the unity American Underground bands would use to legendary effect in this decade.  As the future and behavior of the band would indicate the Mats were more of a classic rock band than anything else despite the hardcore heard on this album.  "Johnny's Gonna Die," the sad but  true story of The Dolls/Heartbreakers' slinger is the true standout would also prove true for the  band's own underrated guitar god Bob Stinson.  It would only get better from here, but the band heard here in full youthful energy makes this album as classic as Let It Be and Tim in many ways.

9.  King Crimson - Discipline
The prog legends return, kind of.  As usual it is pretty much a new band, though Bruford sticks with mainstay Fripp in this version.  The two are joined by young Americans Tony Levin and for the first time, another guitarist.  Adrian Belew, fresh off playing with the Talking Heads, David Bowie, and Frank Zappa  provides the perfect dynamic for Fripp as well as vocals complete with the band's first self-performing lyricist.  Fripp shows he is no dinosaur with the fresh sounds here more akin to the Talking Heads and fellow future-minded peers Bowie and Levin's other boss Peter Gabriel.  This album is very clean and textured with all the precision the title would imply.  While electronic drums and Chapman sticks may not sound like the best ideas on paper this quartet of masters makes  them work to amazing effect making Discipline an albumin a category of its own and as worthy of Fripp's name as any of his other works from the 70s.

8.  Siouxsie and the Banshees - Juju
The Banshees' greatest lineup coalesces here on what is probably their finest and best-known album.  Siouxsie, Steve Severin, guitarist John McGeoch, and percussionist Budgie are in perfect unified form on this dark and swirling album.  Opening with the goth anthem "Spellbound," the  energy level is at its highest since the early days playing with the Pistols and the songwriting is at a new high.  The exotic guitars are driven by the bass reliably wild drums supporting Siouxsie's dramatic vocals on "Arabian Nights" which exemplifies the unpredictable changes heard all over the record.  What is consistent is the dark themes which sometimes put Siouxsie and company in the unfortunate goth category, but while this style is often full of comedic irony, the Banshees pull off the balance of seriocity and fun better than the rest, with "Halloween" being a classic rather than just another piece of goth camp.

7.  The Stanglers - La Folie
With their early albums the Stranglers answer the question of what a punk band led by Rick Wakeman would sound like.  Those albums may be better than this one, but La Folie is a big step forward, allowing the band's less angry, but still as cynically humorous side shine through.  A lot of that is thanks to bassist J.J. Burnel's growing presence such as in the use of his family's tongue on the title track (about a Japanese cannibal).  Despite containing the pretty baroque heroin-anthem-turned-hit "Golden Brown," the album is still dominated by classic Stranglers fare like "Non Stop" and "Pin Up" with their laughably misogynistic lyrics and tastefully flashy keyboard playing.  Its title means "The Madness," and that's true, though in usual Stranglers' fashion not really sincerely.  Great playing, great fun, great dark insanity.

6.  Electric Light Orchestra - Time
E.L.O.'s lost masterpiece is a synthesizer-dominated sci-fi concept album with as much in common with Giorgio Moroder as the Move.  With the band being seen as dinosaurs since their inception, they become more overlooked than ever despite remaining cutting edge.  Maybe it was songs like "Yours Truly, 2095" with its sad view of love with a robot that kept it off the radar, but with synth pop dominating the mainstream at the time, that does not make much since either.  The dense elctonic pop of "Twilight" is as much a standout as the cinematic "Ticket to the Moon" and the Kraftwek-esque (and perhaps Hüsker Dü-inspiring) "Here is the News."  "The Way Life's Meant to Be" provides a bit of the classic sound for anyone still longing for it.  While this album is a total success, the 80s proved to be a disappointment for the symphonic group, so there is a sad irony in the album's time-traveling protagonist wishing to go back to that time, but other than that...

5.  The Psychedelic Furs - Talk Talk Talk
With Steve Lilywhite the unusual sextet makes their best work.  The Furs create a combination of post-punk and, yes, psychedelia that despite the John Hughes-inspiring jangle pop of "Pretty In Pink" has more in common with Bauhaus than John Parr.  The bleating sax-led "Dumb Waiters" is the album's best and darkest track fully worthy  of its title.  "Side two opener "Into You Like A Train" has a similar heavy sound and the large band excels in their dense, circular arrangements setting them apart from others in the New Wave, but inside and outside the mainstream.  Coupled with Richard  Butler's goth vocals the Furs' voice makes them a distinct band even as "this kind of thing" made a return to rock and their second full-length would remain their finest work.

4.  The Cure - Faith
Following a year of personal tragedy following an already dramatically dark growth Robert Smith, Simon Gallup, and Lol Tolhurst make what  is easily the  most depressing album of all time.  Here is a set of eight slow, long dirges that manage to capture all the beauty of soul-crushing sadness for anyone who can handle it.  Some point out the quicker tunes "Primary" and "Doubt" as peppy material, but their tempo is certainly not enough to make anyone  forget about the  lyrics  and the bass playing that defines goth rock for all time.  Are they really serious?  Titles like "All Cats Are Grey," "The Drowning Man," and "The Funeral Party" may sound over the top, but Smith manages to songs so truly depressing that they earn the titles rather than earning the titles a place in the great big book of goth jokes.  While it is not their most fun listen, it is one of the Cure's finest works with each song the most delicious slice of sadness you could hope for.

3.  Brian Eno and David Byne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Without interference from "the other three" Byrne and Eno fully realize their shared vision on this album following hints such as Fear of Music's "Drugs.  The two create a psychedelic bastard child of musique-concrète and Afrobeat witht he otherworldly incorporating of spiritual Middle Eastern  music and American evangelical radio.  The idea was to create a field recording from planet Earth in the late 20th century and considering the duo's awareness of their own limits it is impossible to deny  their success.  It is an even more post-modern approach to the same post-ethnic pop the Heads and Peter Gabriel were doing at this time and an obvious influence on future acts like the Butthole Surfers Animal Collective.  Their vocals make few appearances, but with the samples on "Mea Culpa" and "America is Waiting," not much more could even be desired.

2.  The Sound - From The Lion's Mouth
For anyone looking for more music like Joy Division here it is, and maybe even better.  Adrian Borland's similarities to Ian Curtis are immediate, but he was also a guitar god and even more mentally disturbed, despite his ability to make it to 1999 without suicide.  His tight group does as much to support his wild and nightmarish vision creating some of the best-textured and lean post-punk around.  Opening with the epic "Winning," and the atmospheric chug of "Sense of Purpose," the album has a one-two punch that never relents through songs like "Contact the Fact" and "Skeletons."  The Sound earns their name as one of the most solid bands playing this kind of music at  the time or ever with the four members sharing an intense focus solely on the music as seen in  their highly recommended live performances.  This underappreciated band is a good reminded of how deep the treasure trove of lost post-punk goes.  This one stands up to any of the better known records by the post-punk elite and beyond.

1.  Wipers - Youth of America
As its title implies this is the American response to the apocalyptic post punk going on very far away from this Portland trio.  What further distinguishes this group is leader Greg Sage's willingness to embrace space.  The title track clocks in at over ten minutes with all the energy of his under-two minute pop songs on the debut, bravely diverting from the Stooges' and Germs' assertion that if punk songs are long they should be slow.  He needs all that time for those solos anyway.  While sticking firmly in guitar rock, keyboards are integrated, but not in the usual synthesizers of the time, but rather the pounding piano used by the post-punk legends that inspired this huge album more than anyone in London had.  While "Taking Too Long" has some of the pop in the debut the record is mostly a bleak and intensely building one with "When It's Over" outdoing the title track and the aptly-titled "Pushing the Extreme" in that respect.  Sage's guitar builds and builds and builds only to reach a false conclusion and build again, thanks in no small part to the relentless rhythms behind him.  The proto-grunge legends hit their peak on this set of epic nightmares and could only go one place from here.  More on that in a couple days.

Order was really hard on this one.