1980: Angry (Patreon)

This is one of the brackets which is a fizzy mix of genre and theme - some of the post-punk, hardcore and assorted malcontentery on show here is indeed angry, some of it is trollish, some of it is itchy or sad or just uncomfortable in its own skin. All of it, it’s fair to say, wasn’t exactly embraced by the wider public at the time, but had an instant critical (and often social) impact beyond that.

The biggest strand here - about half the bracket - is US hardcore punk and alternative rock. Unhelpfully, I know almost nothing about hardcore - enough to pick out some important names and throw them in here together, but by the time I actually listened to any of this stuff I was way too old for it to have the kind of skull-crushing impact contemporaries report. I have more fun imagining this stuff while reading Love And Rockets than I do actually listening to it, basically.

One exception - Dead Kennedys had crossed the Atlantic and gained a following of sorts at school, mostly because of “Too Drunk To Fuck”, but also because they had a few absolutely gold-plated hooks in the mix. “Holiday In Cambodia”, their catchiest, but also nastiest, record is in here, and one I’m very ambivalent about. I’m also keen to see how it does. The other shock-tactics standout is the Misfits’ “Last Caress”, the most-streamed track in the bracket, whose trying-nihilism-on-for-size vibe feels like the kind of thing which will find an audience in any generation since.

The other major thing going on here is UK and European post-punk, which works its way across a lot of these brackets. As a counterpoint to the macho of hardcore I put a handful of tracks here by feminist post-punkers - Kleenex, Bush Tetras, The Au Pairs - whose spiky, targeted frustration still feels urgent and inventive.

They’ve also got the cavernous, ringing, dub-derived production that’s still the most exciting thing about post-punk as a sound - the elevation of the bass to the centre of rock, which again we’ll see in a lot of groups here. I don’t know what Ian Curtis is on about in “Dead Souls” but the abyssal turmoil surrounding him means I don’t really have to. Throw in wild cards from Bauhaus’ early goth, Rough Trade’s queer new wave, and the dear old Clash getting sentimental, and you’ve got an enjoyably bolshy opening day bracket.

POTENTIAL WINNER: “Dead Souls” should fight it out with its A-Side “Atmosphere” to be the last Joy Division track standing - its protean shudder is as close as the band came to a ‘groove’.

DARK HORSE: Almost anything might emerge from the murk here but Mission Of Burma’s “Academy Fight Song” has impeccable alt-rock pedigree (covered by REM, etc.) and if UK voters know it (or warm to it) it has a chance of doing well.

BEST TRACK: Who doesn’t love a HONKING GREAT POST-PUNK SAX? Surely nobody, so I feel confident I won’t be the only backer of Kleenex’s squalling “Die Matrosen”

DISCOVERY: Pylon are a band I knew of, and I may even own a record by, but I had a completely wrong-headed idea of their sound, so the chiming, snarling punk-funk of “Danger!” took me excitingly by surprise.

DON’T MISS: “Adults And Children”, a growly bit of New Zealand noise rock from Gordons, continuing the fine tradition of Kiwi underground sounds in these polls.