I'm sorry if I change the subject a bit, but I've seen the genre "post-punk" being name-dropped a bit in this thread. What music is considered as post-punk and what is not? Is it only a historical assocation or an actual sound and esthetic? If it's too off-topic, I'll start another thread.
Post-punk is a name given to a variety of sounds. Historically, it refers to those bands that first started mixing punk rock guitar sounds and energy with other slightly different sounds, like Joy Division, with their synth washes and icy production, Gang of Four, with their funky bass and minimal dubby aspects. With American bands, a lot of the earlier punkier new wave bands are also called post-punk, like Devo and Talking Heads. Pere Ubu are pretty post-punk; there's definitely some punky drums and guitar sometimes, but there's also bits of very minimal melody, saxophone, synths, tape sounds, etc. Do you get the idea? Some post-punk bands are very "punk and ____" but others are still very punk but something about the way it's done or produced is markedly different enough to maybe not want to just call it punk. For a band like Xiu Xiu, which is I guess kind of post-punk, it's less "punk and ____" and more "____, and _____, and _____, oh and also a bit of punk."
