The Best Post-Punk Albums of the '80s

Two months after Ian Curtis's death, Factory released the album he left behind, Martin Hannett sculpting the space around every note. 'Isolation' is the paradox at its center — a synth-pop pulse carrying the bleakest lyric Curtis ever wrote, dance music for the end of the world. Everything gothic, industrial, and darkwave descends from these nine songs.

Robert Smith, dreading his thirtieth birthday, torched the band's pop period on purpose — Fiction released the result in 1989 and it went to No. 3 in the UK anyway. 'Pictures of You' spends seven minutes proving scale and sorrow are not opposites, guitars hung like chandeliers. Flagged as the border where post-punk became cathedral pop; nobody has ever minded.

Art-funk border case, flagged: Brian Eno and Talking Heads built the whole album from looped one-chord grooves patterned on Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. 'Once in a Lifetime' turns a preacher's cadence and a synth ripple into pop's most quotable existential crisis. Sire released it in October 1980; four decades of rhythm-first guitar music cite it like scripture.

Peter Saville put a Fantin-Latour rose basket on the cover with a color-code key and no band name — Factory confidence at its absolute peak. Power, Corruption & Lies completes the walk from post-punk into sequenced pop; 'Age of Consent' opens it with Peter Hook's bass as lead voice and grief finally turning toward the dancefloor. The rebirth album by which all others get measured.

A 35-piece orchestra in a Paris studio, and Ian McCulloch joking down the phone that they'd made the greatest album ever — a gag the label gleefully printed on the posters. Korova released Ocean Rain in May 1984; 'The Killing Moon' remains the closing argument, fatalist romance over cello and an unhurried, enormous chorus. The Bunnymen's imperial moment.

John McGeoch's guitar on 'Spellbound' gets cited by other guitarists the way saints cite miracles — Johnny Marr among the witnesses. Polydor released Juju in June 1981; the Banshees rejected the goth label while inventing most of its wardrobe, and the songs move too fast and think too hard to stay in any one crypt. The classic lineup at full power.

'It doesn't matter if we all die' — the opening line announces the terms, and 'One Hundred Years' keeps every one of them. Fiction released Pornography in May 1982 with the band barely surviving its making; Smith and Tolhurst both later described it as the almost-end of the Cure. The decade's bleakest great record, and proudly so.

Two drummers, one hour, zero compromise: The Fall's Kamera-label peak batters and rants in equal measure. 'Hip Priest' — the crawl that turns up in The Silence of the Lambs' climax — is Mark E. Smith's self-mythology at its driest, 'he is not appreciated' as both chorus and thesis. Entry point and summit at once, which is a very Fall arrangement.

4AD's first full-length release was this: Bauhaus, gaunt and theatrical, founding goth rock while glaring at anyone who said so. 'Double Dare' opens the original LP with Peter Murphy taunting over a riff that stalks rather than runs. Critics savaged it in November 1980; the savaged party got the genre, the aesthetic, and the last laugh. Goth border case, flagged, obviously.

'Requiem' opens the debut like weather turning — E.G. and Malicious Damage released it in October 1980, and its blend of dread, funk, and tribal drums had no precedent. Metallica later covered 'The Wait' from this record, and Nirvana's borrowings are their own famous story. Killing Joke built the bridge between post-punk and metal, then dared both sides to cross it.

Ace of Hearts released Vs. in October 1982, with Martin Swope warping tape loops from offstage as the band's phantom member. 'Secrets' opens it mid-argument, all urgency and angles, smarter than loud and louder than smart. Mission of Burma got one album before Roger Miller's tinnitus called time in 1983 — the great American post-punk record, made by a band the volume ate.

Middleton, Greater Manchester produced the decade's most patient guitar architecture: The Chameleons' Statik debut, August 1983. 'Second Skin' builds in terraces for six minutes, delay-soaked lines interlocking while Mark Burgess sings like memory itself. Interpol and half the 2000s revival worked from these blueprints; the original still towers over the copies.

Recorded on the cheap and rich in everything else, Jeopardy arrived on Korova in November 1980 — the Bunnymen's label, a fraction of the Bunnymen's attention. 'I Can't Escape Myself' opens with Adrian Borland circling the title like a drain, tension ratcheting by increments. The era's great underdog record, and its cult does not lose members.

What happens when downtown guitar damage learns long-form composition — noise-rock border case, flagged. Enigma and Blast First released the 1988 double album; 'Teen Age Riot' opens it with the decade's most welcoming wall of detuned guitars. The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2005, institutional confirmation of what basements already knew.

Every song on Treasure is titled with a name — Ivo, Persephone, Otterley — and sung in a language largely of Elizabeth Fraser's invention. 4AD released it in November 1984 as the Fraser/Guthrie/Raymonde lineup locked into place. 'Lorelei' is the summit, a carousel of voice and chime that needs no translation. Flagged as the wordless border; essential to this story anyway.

Polydor's producer put the drums beside a lift shaft and miked the floors above and below — Sleep No More's cavernous thud is real architecture. The Comsat Angels' second album (1981) is Sheffield paranoia perfected; the title track 'Sleep No More' hangs dread on two chords and lets the building do the rest. The connoisseur's pick of the entire era.