In this week’s edition of Auxtra Weekly, we’ll dive into three post-punk albums from the 80s that serve up the best the genre has to offer. These three albums never picked up much ground commercially despite generating an underground buzz, yet their immersion and sharpness can rival any chart-topping giant from the age.
— Will Thomas

“I Knew Buffalo Bill,” the 1987 collaborative album from The Birthday Party’s Rowland S. Howard, Swell Maps’ Nikki Sudden, and The Barracudas’ Jeremy Gluck, is a pioneering descent into grief, loss, and the aftershocks once the dust settles.

From sprawling post-rock expanses to blues jams, the album is a culmination of each indie darling’s seminal traits. Sudden’s and Howard's jangly, twangy guitars, distinct vocals, and sharp compositional eye set the backdrop for Gluck’s anecdotal lyrics to shine. The trio paint such vivid images of the 19th century, the emotions and human experiences, through their sun-soaked licks and keen focus on the timeframe in which they set themselves.

It’s a vulnerable look into an era whose figures are often regarded as too stoic to indulge in emotional expression. Contrastingly so, “I Knew Buffalo Bill” feels like you’ve taken the bronco’s reins, as if you’re experiencing these feelings through the weathered but weakened eyes of an outlaw.

For fans of: Swell Maps; Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds; Pere Ubu

The 1981 eponymous album by New Zealand rockers The Gordons offers up a heaping helping of distorted, fuzzy, do-it-yourself post-punk. Guitars melt together to form a wall of sound, where repetition and the slow boil is worth more than the immediate payoff.

Vocals are often the afterthought–not to take away from their affects, but the instrumentation is what makes The Gordons so alluring. The jumps from melodic progressions to discordant jams pack a fierce punch that propels each song forward with a vicious unpredictability.

The attitude and sneer of the record feels foreign to its counterparts. There’s an entrenched assuredness to it, where each step is calculated but effortlessly spontaneous. It’s a shame the band never picked up commercially, because their moody debut is a clear sign of unspent gas in the tank.

For fans of: Unwound; Slint; Sonic Youth

Greg Sage’s 1985 post-punk balladry “Straight Ahead” is told from the barrel of a smoking gun. It’s rustic and downtrodden, with its coarse edges and jagged grooves exemplifying Sage’s reflective lyrics.

Sage is at the peak of his songwriting and guitar playing powers on this album. In 1985, his band, the highly touted Portland post-punk band Wipers, was coming off the release of three exceptional albums in four years. “Straight Ahead” is a continuation of Wipers’ dizzying form.

It’s a guitar-heavy, introspective record with an Americana twang. Sage’s detached vocal style and feverish guitar playing accentuate his forlorn itinerancy, where no place feels like home to his restless vagabond.

For fans of: Wipers; Wire; Fugazi