3 Essential Post-Punk Albums From the Early 1980s You Must Hear Today

After the hardcore punk boom of the late 1970s, the genre started evolving into various little offshoots. Influenced by everything from pop to funk to early industrial heavy metal, post-punk became a new kind of punk. Softer, more introspective, but still capable of making hard-hitting statements about life, death, and politics. Post-punk of the 1980s was varied and multifaceted, and here’s just a small taster of some essential albums.

‘English Settlement’ — XTC

XTC’s 1982 album English Settlement marked a more “pastoral” and “acoustic” direction for the band, who had gained breakout success with 1979’s Drums and Wires. But English Settlement is also an album that resists genre classification. As much as it falls under a post-punk umbrella, each track varies in style, creating a smorgasb