Reviving The ’80s: The Sounds Of New Wave In The 21st Century
The ’80s have always been a generation that I was fascinated by — it still remains crazy the sheer breadth of its influence on today’s music. Its development of the post-punk new wave style remains central to genres like post-punk, synth-pop and psychedelia, all of which have manifested some of the musical masterpieces of the twenty-first century. Siouxsie and The Banshees’ The Scream was one of the first albums I bought, and was key in introducing me to how alternative rock and hip-hop relied so heavily on the ’80s as an influence. Without the bizarre, furious noise of Siouxsie and The Banshees, Radiohead or Massive Attack would not be thinking in the same way about how to express the levitations of euphoria and the tests of pain within their masterpieces. Without the experimental eeriness of Joy Division, we would not have Danny Brown titling his songs from 1970s sci-fi novels, or Vince Staples using the radio waves of a star discovered in 1967 as an album cover— both rappers clearly having been influenced by the band’s poignant and introspective artistry. These are only a few examples of how important this generation of musical history (a generation that exuded confidence in strangeness and embraced the approach of electronica) is in pushing the popular genres of today into innovative directions, and hopefully, this article goes some way into showing that.
‘Cherry’ by Chromatics (& ‘Man Of The Year’ by ScHoolboy Q) [2013]
Genre: Synth-Rock/Dream Pop
Once you hear an amazing hip-hop beat, I highly encourage you to look up whether it has a sample and, if so, what piece it samples. This helped me to appreciate the talent of the record producer that matches and can even surpass the amount of thought that went into the songwriting. It is with the vision of hip-hop producers that hip-hop broadened its conventions, becoming influenced by and intertwining its expression with such genres as alternative rock, dance and even classical music. In the twenty-first century, testaments for this include the excellent hip-hop instrumentals of producer Harry Fraud — little did I think that I would hear the violinist Jean-Luc Ponty’s ‘Forms of Life’ become interspersed with the psychedelic Beast Coast sound of rapper Neako on ‘The Lufthansa Heist’, an artistic depth receiving notable praise from Simon Cowell at the Emmy Awards.
In this vision of rock and rap, old synths and old school, very few modern hip-hop instrumentals have come close to the triumph of Schoolboy Q’s ‘Man Of The Year’. I was initially confused by producers Nez & Rio’s sampling process for the song: why were these portions of Chromatics’ gentle mix of post-new wave and dream pop on ‘Cherry’ chosen to lay the foundations of Q’s gritty, profane narratives about excess?
However, the disparity between the two is a crucial understanding of the nature of new wave, especially the role that Chromatics plays in its revival. In both the original song and Q’s revised version, pain is seen to be expressed in the same vein as its expression of euphoria, a more subtle hearkening to the vicious minimalism from which post-punk originated. The context of the song is underpinned by the eponymous ‘Cherry’, an allusion flashing back to The Magnetic Fields’ 1992 synth-pop single ‘Candy’. In both songs, we are observers overlooking the abandonment of a broken relationship; the names ‘Cherry’ or ‘Candy’ not only denote people, but themes of togetherness, happiness and faith in the order of the world. Where lead singer Ruth Radelet’s vocals may seem motionless and spaced out as she visualises a person who is ‘very sweet’, her true sentiments become pronounced and pitched — she frequently astounds you with the spectral vision showing the darker form of this idealised being, entrapped images of the masks of falsehood and the mental tolls of relationship. She is unapologetic as she comes to terms with the fact that ‘she can’t keep crying’, and that it is no longer humanly possible that she can wait for ‘Cherry’ to ‘find what I see in you’ — a bildungsroman-esque lesson of the truth that not every person’s story has an arc, and that some choose to remain in stasis. New wave music, as shown here, forms itself out of the chaos that we constantly endure as adulthood approaches and leaves us on our own two feet. Though, in the solace of its sound, all we can do is dance.
‘And The Rain…’ by John Maus [2011]
Genre: Lo-Fi/Synth-Pop/Post-Punk
Hearing the difference between the studio version and John Maus’ live performance of ‘…And The Rain’ was — like the combination of Schoolboy Q and Chromatics — perplexing at first. The studio release resonates more with what Maus defines the scope of his music by — the mix of church modes with the baritone of some otherworldly entity through which his songs become timeless in the most literal sense, encouraging explorations of the forgotten past and the quickly forthcoming future in simultaneity. But in the KEXP live performance, the soothingly hypnotic characteristics of ‘…And The Rain’ is inverted — instead, Maus descends into screams and hints of a movement he labels ‘the hysterical body’. The concept of the hysterical body, as he goes on to say, is the revelation of the truth: an attempt to ‘appear as something else than life as it stands’, to become our unabashed censors in the face of a world that forces upon us shame for revealing our inner truth.
This demand for someone to ‘tell me the truth’ plays a central role in the themes of the song, in which Maus is constantly distracted by the memory that the ‘rain came down’. As reflected in virtually all examples of new wave, the song’s catchiness is deceptive once acknowledging its thematic content— the muffled calls for the truth are the ruminations of someone who is restless, who cannot enjoy the seductive euphoria of modern times with the suspicion that it comes at a sacrifice. These are thoughts deeply rooted in Maus’ past as an academic, lecturing at the University of Hawaii on the lost histories of music and the vulnerability of art to new technological powers.
So it only is appropriate that Russian Doll — a fantastic Netflix series that was primarily responsible for the rabbit hole of new and post-new wave music that I had fallen into — uses the songs of John Maus as its backdrop. As software engineer Nadia Vulvokov wanders through the same day again and again, each time coming up with new perspectives on how she sees her past and evaluating what place is destined for her in the future, the position she bears as the fly on the wall slowly becomes a post-punk symbol of her resistance against the flaws of existence she sees before her — inauthenticity, commercialism, addiction. Both Nadia and Maus uniquely share, in the spirit of their post-punk nature, their lack of outlandish costumes and hairstyles compared to their predecessors. This reiterates the sense of the normality of these two characters, the software engineer and the academic, but makes even more intriguing their supernatural ability to revisit the memories that have become fleeting in our present.
‘Obstacle 1’ by Interpol [2002]
Genre: Indie Rock/Post-Punk Revival
The lyrics for ‘Obstacle 1’, in a manner reminiscent of the lyrics to Pearl Jam’s ‘Black’, represent Interpol’s choice for the complexities of the abstract to describe what is in fact very straightforward about human relationships. Though both express similar lamentations, there is a frailty to the latter compared to ‘Black’ — namely, Eddie Vedder’s gravelly tones being traded for the staticky howls of Interpol’s Paul Banks. However, this does not mean ‘Obstacle 1’ is any weaker in its expression, and its style can be explained through the band’s influence from the 1970s band Joy Division (a quintessential group for the discussion about the leading acts in new wave). The legendary vocals of Ian Curtis — a musician too soon passed — would encapsulate an aesthetic where insecurity was rife, the true meaning of life wavered with trauma, and the singer’s self-esteem was solely found behind the microphone. Through this, we begin to understand the impact that Interpol have experienced from the legacy of Joy Division and countless other bands in new wave, and the impact they seek to recreate to encourage future bands to follow suit.
Being a product of this legacy does not render them any less unique, however. What makes Interpol special is the hard-hitting gravity of the poetry behind their melancholic take on alternative rock in comparison to that of similar, critically-acclaimed bands spawned from this niche (e.g. Muse, The Strokes). In the chorus of ‘Obstacle 1’, where Banks bemoans that ‘it’s different now that I’m poor and ageing’ so he’ll ‘never see this face again’, the central metaphor arises: the premature death of 21-year-old Natasha Duncan, a Manhattan-based model who had committed suicide in the year previous to the song’s release. The phobias that were synonymous with the lyricism of the new wave ring depressingly true here — the fear of the power of corporations, sweeping over every element of art until art becomes a proponent for superficiality and segregation. The fall of the cover model whose ‘face’ was once in glory forms the song’s symbol for a cruel reality: life never gives us the privilege of a constant, and what is seen as beautiful (be it work, relationships, family, nature) can equally be made to fade in its beauty at the whim of those in power. Though the underlying themes of the song are distressing, the multiple contexts encompass a range of experiences and grant Interpol’s listeners an element of liberation for their pain — in music, many artists can invest their depression, and in music, we resonate with their expression and are no longer alone.
‘Strawberry Privilege’ by Yves Tumor [2020]
Genre: Rock/Psychedelic Soul
We may never know what historical period Yves Tumor (real name Sean Bowie) will represent. 2018’s Safe In The Hands Of Love (which I have discussed more extensively here) proved one of the most profound explorations into the notion of ‘abstract’ music: a haunting yet alleviating experience of what is meaningfully meaningless, warped noise premonitions of an apocalypse conversing with ’80s-funk-laced angst and despair. Bowie’s most recent album, Heaven To A Tortured Mind (2021), favoured the latter side of its predecessor’s experimental complex. The album saw Yves Tumor set a benchmark for any contemporary revisitation of not just post-punk new wave, but the 1980s (whether that be glam rock, psychedelia, or the elements of soul that fed into the evolution of ’90s R&B). In all honesty, I did not feel moved in the same way as I had in comparison to Safe In The Hands Of Love, and thus waited throughout HTATM’s runtime for any track that would go back to that earlier experience of Bowie’s work. It was in the tenth track, ‘Strawberry Privilege’, that this feeling of awe came back to me. The song comprised a mix of groovy basslines that wouldn’t be unfound in a Jamiroquai track, Bowie’s hazy and otherworldy falsettos, and the ghostly vocals of Sunflower Bean’s frontwoman Julia Cumming interspersed throughout. Bowie had produced that signature emotional chaos once again — the element of their music for which they appeared to me as a current-day musical revolutionary, that potential of conjoining smooth R&B listenability with the nightmarish unknown of electronic music and performance.
But it also reminded me that, alongside the rest of the songs, the album altogether represented a much-needed shift from Safe In The Hands Of Love that will (at least, with the assumptions after listening to Bowie’s 2021 EP) define the trajectory of their music in the foreseeable future. Like the performance of ‘Strawberry Privilege’ has exemplified, the star-bound enigma of Yves Tumor could be seen as an example of the ultimate successor to the new wave of the ’80s: the melancholy and heartbreak of R.E.M., the disco elements of the Pet Shop Boys, the gothic romanticism of Siouxsie, and the Starman’s subversions of concepts of gender-based capacities within music. But they are so much more – their experience is tinged by their growth in a modern era, with new issues, genres, and sounds that are of importance to engage through their art, and thus their discography will remain a timeless artefact that will help make the 2020s a decade worth reviving for artists in the next century.
If you would like to further explore the music in this article, I’ve put together a playlist comprising of the music discussed in this article, as well as some extra recommendations that might help. The link is here.
Thank you for reading.
