On first listen, this felt like a strange inclusion for the list, but given that we seem dedicated to exploring every nook and cranny of the post-punk/new wave story, I guess it's not all that surprising. I was not really engaged on my first listen, and it didn't leave much of an impression. Listening closer was a better experience, and I'm glad I took the second pass.
I'm interested in how much this blends glam rock (and a little prog) back into the post-punk mix. There's certainly some punk here, but I hear echoes of The Stooges, Bowie, Billy Joel, and The Velvet Underground throughout. The inclusion of saxophones and organs really sets this apart from other post-punk I've heard from this era... maybe this is really more post-glam with a little punk influence than it is the other way around? The big guitar solos feel more at home under the hard rock or post-glam umbrella than they do as post-punk. It sounds like they edge more into post-punk later, so that probably colors their ultimate genre classification.
TANGENT TIME!
Did we miss an opportunity to create a sub-genre here?
A quick search suggests that post-glam isn't an established genre but the more I sit with it here, the more tempted I am to die on it's hill. I guess it's better to call these guys post-punk than to have them labeled as the only group in a sub-genre that otherwise never took off.
Esthetically, the hair metal of the 80s was the direct successor to glam rock and all its accumulated mid-late 70s excess. But musically, this record feels like a clearer descendant of the music that established glam rock in the late 60s and early 70s. I guess monoculture probably didn't allow for all of the sub-genres like we have now, but I wish this was a bigger segment of the post-punk umbrella. The "What could have been?" story of post-glam is a perfect mirror to the story of The Only Ones (who never got the big break they seemed prime for) and ironically adds a whole new layer to the band name. Anyways, I apologize if you've read this far.
