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01.10.20 paps runs through his favs real quick (12.07.19 just gonna put this here to remember
07.17.19 On Hip-Hop07.08.19 June 2019 resumé
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Post-Punk Heartbreakers

Let's be honest, there is hardly any other genre specifically built for the tortured. Its nature is gloomy by design; even the faster and happier tracks display a certain level of chagrin. And while I am actively participating (and miserably losing) in a Post-Punk-off competitions (yeah, you can also pretty much see a horde of what I am going to submit there…I don’t know, dibs…? I guess.), I thought I'd share a bunch of songs that highlight the genre's often dark undertones as perfectly as it can be.
1Red Lorry Yellow Lorry
Talk About the Weather


Hand on Heart
Cause of heartbreak: frustration
"The importance of nothing, your own bleak conclusion"

Let's start off with arguably the best and simultaneously most dismissed Post-Punk album of all time. Clocking at barely 30 minutes, it'd be hard to pick a highlight among the maelstrom of despair and desperation showcased on this album. But I will go ahead and do it anyway. Hand on Heart might not be musically darkest or most emotionally riveting offering on the album; it is definitely the album's bleakest and dreamiest cut. Besides it was my first introduction to it. And with this being possibly the first ever Post-Punk album I've ever heard, that'll mean this was the first ever Post-Punk song I've heard. And knowing just how big a wet-pants, hot-piss, die-hard Post-Punk bitch I am today, you can imagine that it probably had quite an impact.
2Joy Division
Substance


Atmosphere
"Don't walk away, in silence"

By the time Joy Division were recording Closer it was already obvious that Ian Curtis' frustration with the world was nearing the breaking point at the very least in the lyrics. He was no longer focusing on closed problems or referencing personal struggles, he was going all out there proclaiming the world as it is to be the poison. And while many found the detachment from the focus on a self for the view of the world an improvement, I always deemed it to be a rather direction disintegration. As if Ian just needed to punch into every direction, gradually disoriented and lost, which eventually grew into what we know it grew into. This song was recorded around that time too and while it was by far not the last song under Ian's wing, it still sounds like his farewell lullaby. It was made in the times of lyrical distortion and it is the most personal and tormented piece the band has ever laid their hands on. That was it. Acknowledging your own end.
3The Sound
From The Lion's Mouth


Winning
Cause of heartbreak: anxiety
"What holds your hope together? Make sure it's strong enough"

While many might consider Jeopardy as their best work, I deem From the Lion's Mouth's more traditional sombre and gloomy approach more biting into my primary tastes. This track is a picture of a crestfallen man. It's a journey to secure the well-being and prosperity of those closest to you, even though they might be slowly, but surely drifting away. Not as directly sad or quiet track, but one that takes all of the tropes of a typical depressing Post-Punk track and turns them a notch rawer.
4And Also The Trees
(Listen for) the Rag and Bone Man


Domed
Cause of heartbreak: estrangement
“On a strange and bloodied sand, beneath the domed and lonely sky”

Pretty much everything this band has ever done can be filled into each and every one of these spots. They are dismal and soul-crushing by design. Their slow-pace and deafeningly quiet approach is engulfing. It's almost astonishing how little they can change in their style over the years and still come off original and fantasque time and time again. For the purposes of this list I will choose only one song; one of the few that encapsulates their usual isolated and subdued sound with a new wave of creeping cold fog of menace and haunt.
5Interpol
Our Love to Admire


The Lighthouse
Cause of heartbreak: detachment
"This place is set to break, it's just as safe from the outside tonight"

You can pretty much thank this band for making the modern revivalism movement relevant. While Our Love to Admire might be their most fast-pace and blasting (which isn’t saying much) record, it still found time to show us the band’s dreamiest and most “starry eyed” soul-stomper. Its simple tangling guitar, nearly drumless structure engulfs and entangles you more than the waves clashing into the symbolic lighthouse. And what horrors might transpire within that lighthouse that it is just as safe as the outside? This is an equal part gorgeous and haunting track that is way too often criminally dismissed.
6Preoccupations
Preoccupations


Fever
Cause of heartbreak: letting go‎
"Waking up to watch you walk away"

On their second full-length album, Preoccupations ventured to explore much less instrumentally aggressive and sonically dizzying sounds. The result was easily one of the best Post-Punk albums in recent memory, even though it took me a while to realise that. My initial stun was caused by the obscure creative decisions the band made. Namely the strange and uneventful ambient interlude on the track Memory, as well as the two literally unfinished one minute long tracks Sense and Forbidden. But even those tracks managed to slip their roots through the cracks of my mind and implant it with their addictive melodies and instrumental/production combo. The album to me seems like a process of gradually accepting grief into your world... ‎
7Preoccupations
Preoccupations


[CON'D] From initial cynical and nonchalant approach to the subject on Anxiety, then going through the breaking point on a glorious Memory, and eventually stumbling upon the absolute mind decomposition that is Fever.‎ Everything leads to this, the absolute inability to hold back your inner grief, your demons and everything that has been tearing you apart this whole time. You give way and all the rot comes out.
8Holy Esque
At Hope's Ravine


Prism
Cause of heartbreak: struggle
"Cold broken child on a path through the wild"

Of course, we can't talk about the sad-boy wankeries only; it's time to get tougher and get through the heartbreak with the good old rage and upfront contextualised aggression. This song is blasting with emotional stir. It doesn’t pretend that the kind of hurt that it is needs to be quiet and sophisticated; on the contrary, it smashed everything around it with the swirling tornado of aggression and senseless angst.
9The Ex and Tom Cora
Scrabbling at the Lock


State of Shock
Cause of heartbreak: ‎rage
“Sure, one can hide but there's a world outside”

Now let’s combine the last two mentioned types (and one that comes right after this) of sorrowful music. In that, this song mixes an intriguing instrumental creativity and an upfront, fast-beat and raging attitude. It’s a menacing and furious track full of that exact sorrow being gradually overthrown by a wall of stubborn irate anguish.
10The Smiths
Strangeways, Here We Come


Unhappy Birthday
Cause of heartbreak: sorrow
“And if you should die I may feel slightly sad”

To me personally, just a simple sadness or an absence of positivity is not the most heart-breaking and soul crushing experience. What does reach that tier, however, are all of those feelings, but masked as a positive. Hidden in charades behind a stone wall of blissful joy, it's the bittersweet experiences that really hurt, because you know the emotional solitude and the pain behind that entire happy pretence. It's just there to hide the sadness. Sure, picking the Smiths’ Unhappy Birthday isn’t the best choice, but this is the one category that extends beyond one simple example, so let the example be the most on-the-nose one. It’s a technicality.
11Dead Can Dance
Within the Realm of a Dying Sun


Xavier
Cause of heartbreak: lament
"Fate, although Xavier has prayed that life giving waters may rain"

While still on the subject of hiding the true nature of a song, let's look at the exact opposite of it, Dead Can Dance created an almost literal funeral march. Xavier is both haunting and engrossing. It progresses from a sombre and a tad obscure detour to a monstrous wake sermon. It's a truly tormented track that doesn't try to hide its hellish nature at all.
12Nautilus Pompilius
Nevidimka


Goodbye, America!
Cause of heartbreak: sameness of living
“Когда умолкнут все песни, которых я не знаю” (I don’t know, should I translate it for you?)

There's something fascinating about trend reinterpretations that come from people who have close to no way of knowing what those trends actually are or how you come about making them. A good example of that is basically anything artistic that rose up from behind the gates of USSR. From their movies that each was done without any Hollywood picture as an example, to their music that had to be formed on what they could only assume is an American lifestyle. The troubled rebellious youth of Russia back in the day simply wanted to sound as distant from their homeland as they could and they interpreted any bootlegged contraband music as the stable of trends in the Western world. Not necessarily, because they wanted to live in the Western world, but rather because it was the exact polar opposite of the realities they found themselves in...
13Nautilus Pompilius
Nevidimka


[CON'D] This track is a bitter nostalgic look back at the time, when the written above was still very much true. The song’s perfectly grandiose and engrossing spectacle of flashing instrumentation mixes New Wave and Post-Punk as well as a hint of Stadium Rock. It’s a clash of everything they knew at the time. No endgame, just a pure enthusiasm and youthful curiosity.
14Protomartyr
Relatives In Descent


A Private Understanding
Cause of heartbreak: ‎stranger in a familiar place
"She's just trying to reach you."

A recent endeavour, but one that immediately made its way to the echelons of my Post-Punk favouritism. While I never saw Protomartyr as a band particularly successful in their attempts at finding their own path in this mess we call Post-Punk, I at least could appreciate their musical voyage all around their hopeful eventual discovery of the long overdue creatively original and instantly recognisable sound. And if their forthcoming record sounds anywhere close to this song, I feel like they might have just stumbled upon that very sound. Granted, the follow-up single My Children dissolves those hopes a little with its middle-of-the-road atmosphere that sounds like an interlude deep-cut. Still, A Private Understanding seems to me like the musical display of a biggest fear one could endure upon, the eternal solitude. The disconnection from the world.
15Protomartyr
Relatives In Descent


I've spent too much time of my life devoted to myself and my deliberate isolation from the rest of the world, seeking refuge in my own thoughts and the world I evoke through my dreams. And now, as I inadvertently crumble to meet the eternity of absence, I start to reconsider the choices I've made and the paths I took, all that I regret and all that I still want to do. I am not afraid of death; personally I want to die before reaching 80 and preferably by my own hand. I feel it's a way better way to go than to crumble down from some kind of crippling disease, but that's just me. I know that suicide is a touchy subject not just around here, but that's just how I want to go, when I feel like it's time to go. I want to be in charge of my life from now on, even to the point of radical decisions.
16Protomartyr
Relatives In Descent


With that said I am not afraid of death. What I am afraid of is that it's too late for me to connect. As I said, I am not a particularly social person; I never had a lot of friends, because I didn't want to. Now I feel like I do, though. But I am afraid of becoming what the old man from the music video and what the object of observation in the lyrics I assume to be; an old man, surrounded by the disinterested and the apathetic. Lost in the crowd of people I myself once was and now it's too late. It is, in fact. I only managed to connect to people through the wonders of the internet, for which I am thankful. I might be merely searching for meaning in a song that either has another or none at all, but that's where I'm at. I feel like this song spoke to me and I hope it'll do the same to you. It's a heart-breaker like no other.
17Talking Heads
Remain in Light


Go ahead and submit what Post-Punk songs leave you hollow inside and why and I’ll add them.
18Self Defense Family
Try Me


Turn the Fan On (Suggested by Scoot, no personal input, apparently)
Cause of heartbreak: stress
"Someone talked through the best part, y‎ou'll have to start again‎"

A song as hard to digest as the struggles it was born in. It doesn't try to strike you with the typical sombre depth or a bludgeoning and gradually disintegrating repetition, as many other songs on here do. It's rather slowly enthralling you with just how disoriented and loveless it sounds. As if someone sucked all joy and sense of passion out of the band and they recorded a pure dismay.‎
19New Model Army
Thunder and Consolation


Green and Grey (Suggested by Madbutcher3)
Cause of heartbreak: ‎disillusionment
"Nothing changes here very much, I guess you'd say it never will"‎

I had to think for a while as to what words can I use to describe this song. And I think I found them. It's confused, but hopeful. The song has a refreshingly upbeat chorus, even though it itself is in no way a positive track. It doesn't break your heart, it rather bruises your spirit.

Madbutcher3's input
Mixture of nostalgia over one's origins, regardless of how glamorous they are, and the disdain for those who try and seperate themselves from it in order to gain a sense of superiority. Song is great in general, not sure I'd call it a heartbreaker but it stands out to me.
20The Chameleons
Strange Times


Soul in Isolation (Suggested by Pheromone)
Cause of heartbreak: mindlessness
"I give you my time to kill
But you'll never never break my will
Or I could sink a sleeping pill
And in the morning could be sleeping still
But, most of you are much too ill
Oh, way beyond a surgeons skill‎"‎

One kind of sorrow I did not tackle is the overwhelming one. And that's where this song comes in. It seems like a little slower and directionless at first, but then you're immediately subjected to the explosive and blood-pumping melancholy with all of its distressed atmosphere and feeling of loss.

Pheromone's input
A lot of Chameleons songs have a similar meaning and make me feel equally as empty in the world.‎
21Bauhaus
Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape


Bela Lugosi's Dead
Cause of heartbreak: nihilism
"White on white translucent black capes"

I intially wanted to avoid cliché obvious picks, but since I already have Atmosphere on, I might as well delve into this one. While on its core seemingly purposefully tiring the listeners with its overlong instrumental intro (and outro), it's engulfing at repeated listens.
22The Sound
Jeopardy


Missiles (Suggested by Pheromone, approved by Conmaniac)
‎Cause of heartbreak: stubbornness
"Missiles leave carnage, where there once was a town"

A sort of a protest song that through its attitude and performance gives an indication that maybe the mentioned injustices in the world that are brought in focus are a means of dealing and numbing down personal frustration and struggles.‎
23Public Image Ltd.
First Issue


Low Life (Suggested by butcherboy)
"Your alter-ego is a moron"
Not really the musical style that comes to mind, when thinking of heartbreaking songs. That is because it's not really that. It is not a heartbreaking song, it is a heartbroken song, displaying all the nerve-wrecking disappointment in the loss of love and trust.

butcherboy's input
This stormy number and as straightforward a song as John Lydon made post-Pistols, was my go-to at the peak of my using years and serves as a somewhat tender reminder of the only functional relationship I managed to maintain during that time.. we were both burnouts really and there were plenty dark moments in that stretch, but there were also a lot of genuine moments of proper innocence attached, like it always is with young addiction.. I've also been slowly chipping away at writing a 10-episode series about five surfers in a small isolated coastal village, and in my mind this song would be the perfect choice for the closing scene of the finale.
24The Gun Club
Fire of Love


Ghost on the Highway (Suggested by butcherboy)
Cause of heartbreak: lovesickness
"I hate you, but I love you. I'll carry that to the end"

Again, quite an unusual choice for a heartbreaking song, but as most things in Post-Punk, only because it appears to be upbeat, is far from meaning it is anything close to being about happiness.

butcherboy's input
Another faster one, which at times betrays how heartbreaking it is.. A tumultuous dissection of love more than anything, and perfect for Jeffrey Lee Pierce's desperate vocals, it just feels you with dread and abandonment.. in the most gleeful way possible.. For me personally, this song has been a trove of memory, both in its happy beginnings and invariably soured contrails.
25New Order
Substance


Ceremony (Suggested by butcherboy)
Cause of heartbreak: solitude
"All she ask's the strength to hold me, then again the same old story"

Maybe not my first choice, but still as good as any. It's a visceral and hollowing track combining a rather upbeat and cheerful play with a certain atmosphere of sudden solitude.

butcherboy's input
A New Order track will fill the loop nicely since you already have Joy Division up there, and this one is a plaintive scorcher.. They were always slightly plagued with second-child syndrome, after Curtis shuffled off this mortal coil.. and before they started dabbling in stiff disco, their work rivaled anything JD put out, at least to me personally.. at its heart and skeleton, Ceremony is just what post-punk should be - beautiful and broken, packed with so much emotion and anxiety and poetism that you can feel yourself come apart as you dance to it.
26Joy Division
Unknown Pleasures


Day of the Lords (Suggested by Artuma)
Cause of heartbreak: ‎depression
"There's no room for the weak"

A calm after the storm, I call it. As if there was a whole scene of moral violence and discouraging hopelessness that took place right before it and all you can do now is sit and reflect, still very much enraged, but also gradually calming down as the storm has passed.
27Television Personalities
The Painted Word


Painted Word (Suggested by Pheromone)
Cause of heartbreak: disappointment
"But if a picture paints a thousand words, then I will paint a book for you"

Pheromone is right, it is hard to pick just one song off of it. This album's structure and off-the-wall instrumental/production approach, in combination with the melancholic and brooding moods preented althroughout the album kind of defeat the purpose of pointing out highlight as everything is designed to be equally as shadowy. It's all grim, it's all bleak. So be it, for the purposes of this list I shall take the title track.

Pheromone's input
Ïf you haven't heard this album and you love post-punk that leaves you absolutely empty, this is the opus. The lyricism by Tweedy is nothing but absolute negativity. For example ('The children scream, her husband doesn't care, So many times, she's wished he wasn't there' A Life of Her Own) but tbh that's not an honest representation of just how dark this album is.
28Positive Noise
Heart of Darkness


No More Blood and Soil
Cause of heartbreak: desperation‎
"NO! (no!) NO! (no!)"

At first, there's nothing strikingly heartbreaking about this track, but just you wait until that beautifully poignant chorus kicks in. Mostly these kinds of socially-political tracks try to push their message with aggression and ruthlessness, but Positive Noise sound almost desperate. It's like the message of "stopping all blood and soil" is so important to them that they'll go to any lengths to accomplish their task, but lately have felt a strong breakage of spirit and motivation.
29Tuxedomoon
Holy Wars


In a Manner of Speaking
Cause of heartbreak: heartvoid
"But the way that i feel about you is beyond words"

Tuxedomoon aren't exactly the band you go to for your dose of saddening music, since their delivery is mostly slightly apathetic and its experimental aesthetic transcends basic human emotions and instead heads for the indescribable and illusive to earthly understanding. But every now and then they have to direct their artistic études for human delight. And for this one they chose the ever so relevant topic of the general lovelust and its subsequent absence. It's a tale as old as humanity itself (or the emotionally confronting part of it anyway) and under the glow of new and fresh musical arrangement from Tuxedomoon it also sounds as beautiful as such theme ever could.‎
30The Cure
Disintegration


Lovesong (suggested by dewinged and his distanced understanding of the genre)
Cause of heartbreak: love, the typical and upfront‎
"You make me feel like I am young again"‎

The Cure are masters of carefully constructed bleakness. Their discography is full of sorrowful material, so I'm glad that it wasn't me who had to pick something. Lovesong is a proclamation of what stands in the title. It exclaims calmly, but hides the juvenile joy; appears sophisticated, but tears up a little; presents itself as caring, but drowns in near-worshipping obsession. It describes that heavenly state of acknowledging and realising your love. It shows all the dedication you are willing to put into your love. And it is a beauty to behold.‎
31Have a Nice Life
The Unnatural World


Guggenheim Wax Museum (suggested by neekafat)‎
Cause of heartbreak: purgatory‎
"Build a cenotaph that stands"

Have a Nice Life made a name for themselves for essentially constantly creating alternative soundtracks to E. Elias Merhige's Begotten. Their command of the haunting melodies, bone chilling instrumental and skin dripping production finesse has had quite an impact on people. But what many don't notice, or rather don't what to notice, is that their music is soaked in an odd and often frightening layer of genuine fearful sorrow. It's all hellish and demonic, but it all comes from a very true, soul-crushing place. This song as if blasts through your ears with all the intensity and fright of a funeral pyre. But you are not the witness of the rite, you are the cause itself, observing from your spiritual far the ritual of your own burial, only to be slowly dragged into the melting depth of place beyond the real.‎
32Lebanon Hanover
Why Not Just Be Solo


A Very Good Life
Cause of heartbreak: unfulfillment
"I will avoid your eyes"

Lebanon Hanover have a style that is by no means revolutionary. But its their utterly deadpan, emotionless and monotone delivery that stretches the mark. The disinterested vocals, the placid instrumentation, the echoic production; all elements of a perfect incapsulation of one's inability to connect, no matter how hard they try.
33Bleib Modern
Antagonism


Mirror
Cause of heartbreak: alienation
"When she danced I could see myself in her"

Rather a direct hit of a track, one that doesn't shy away from revealing the demons it is plagued by, but also appreciates life of sombreness. It tingles softness of an acoustic guitar and raw production on everything else, mostly typical for the genre.
34O. Children
Apnea


Holy Wood
Cause of heartbreak: born into mayhem
"Let us out, let us move, let us know where we go"

An oddment balancing between celebration of your own heretic alienation, and criticising massive cultural detachments. Nonetheless, an ode to the less fortunate of us that were born and raised in the absurdly intellectually and civilisation-wise distant realms.
35King Dude
Sex


Our Love Will Carry On
Cause of heartbreak: melancholy
"I'll pour my last glass as I've done in the past"

This is not the clearest example of King Dude's Post-Punkisms, but it is still by far one of the most enticing and beautiful songs I've ever heard in my life. It speaks volumes on love, that old beast; it speaks of estrangement, the wretched foe of happiness; it speaks of all of the worldly problems we have and the inability to find gentleness within us, eventually falling into the pit of despair, only to be salvaged by that one that caused us all this anguish in the first place. It is a hautning beauty and it is worth all of the attention in the world.
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