Like Bauhaus, yesterday’s featured artist, Siouxsie and the Banshees were an English “post-punk” band. That doesn’t bode well for my enjoyment of their music.
Kaleidoscope, released in 1980, was the band’s third album and their most successful. They released eight more studio albums over the next 15 years and have continued to tour. It’s nice to see some of these bands still making a go of it 35 years later.
Bauhaus is another band I’ve heard of but never heard. I assumed they were German, but they’re actually English. Described as a cross between punk and goth rock, they released their debut album in 1980, then three more albums over the following three years.
They reunited 25 years later to release an album that will likely be their last, as the group had a major falling out during its recording and agreed to disband.
I’m wading into less familiar territory this week as I continue to feature critically-acclaimed albums from 1980. I’ve heard of the next five bands but I can’t say I’ve heard anything by them.
English rock band Echo & the Bunnymen released their debut album, Crocodiles, in 1980, kicking off a career that’s still going 36 years later. A couple of the original band members died and the whole operation went on hiatus for a few years in the early 90s, but founding members Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant released a new album just two years ago and continue to tour.
The Cure is one of those quintessential 80s bands that helped define the New Wave era, particularly in the mid to late part of the decade. They started their career in the late 70s in a gloomy goth mode that persisted — at least in the band’s appearance — even after they were writing far poppier material.
I’m familiar only with a few of The Cure’s hits, and I like those a lot. Whether that appreciation would carry over to a whole album is anybody’s guess.
The #1 album on Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll for 1981 was The Clash’s Sandinista!, the triple-album follow-up to their heralded London Calling. The album was released in December of 1980, just missing the cut for that year’s poll.
Interestingly, it was London Calling — released in January 1980 in the States — that topped the 1980 poll. Critics were apparently in a Clash state of mind at the turn of the decade.
Meet Me In Montauk 