{"id":10890,"date":"2012-11-07T10:02:05","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T10:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=10890"},"modified":"2012-11-07T12:25:27","modified_gmt":"2012-11-07T12:25:27","slug":"the-new-raw-and-female-sound-women-in-post-punk-and-a-plug","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2012\/11\/07\/the-new-raw-and-female-sound-women-in-post-punk-and-a-plug\/","title":{"rendered":"The new, raw, and female sound: women in post-punk (and a plug)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past year, a lot of my spare time has been spent researching and writing on women in post-punk for Julia Downes’ new history of the girl band, Women Make Noise<\/strong><\/a>. <\/p>\n

A surprisingly difficult part of this was establishing what we talk about when we talk about post-punk. Roughly, the term refers to the wave of musical experimentation which took place in the wake of punk from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. It was informed conceptually by the art-school background and grounding in political and cultural theory of many of its members, and distinguished by musical, vocal and lyrical experimentation and by a frequently self-conscious and self-critical approach to the idea of being in a band and making music. All of which meant that it sounded, to varying degrees, original, arresting, and odd.<\/p>\n

Post-punk\u2019s disorderly, subversive and category-resistant nature has seen it marginalised in accounts of its era, although the past few years have produced a handful of useful retrospectives<\/a>, as well as the early-2000s revival<\/a> of post-punk musical techniques which, if you still can\u2019t explain what it is, at least make it easier to explain what it sounds like.<\/p>\n

For me, a large part of the significance of post-punk was that it seemed to involve an unprecedented amount of women as artists, fans, and critics. Its musical, political and aesthetic influence can be traced in many subsequent female-friendly movements, including twee, riot grrrl, grunge and electro. Some post-punk women \u2013 the Slits<\/a>, the Raincoats<\/a>, Lydia Lunch \u2013 have made a more enduring dent in popular consciousness than others, and some of them are more \u2018hmm, interesting\u2019 than \u2018fuck yeah, hidden early-80s gem\u2019, but all the artists featured below are worth a spin.<\/p>\n

Extending the gains of punk\u2019s emphasis on DIY culture, accessibility and amateurism, post-punk women were able to take their bands in experimental directions, producing lyrics which explored the female experience in startlingly innovative ways, and music which itself took on what Slits bassist Tessa Pollitt described, when I interviewed her for the book, as a \u2018new, raw, and female\u2019 form, a self-consciously radical sound dealing with rarely-expressed emotions like embarrassment, awkwardness and anxiety.<\/p>\n

In terms of subject matter, post-punk\u2019s ideological concern with the politicisation of the personal, and with identifying and promoting authenticity in the face of popular cultural stereotypes, lent itself to exploration from a feminine and feminist angle. This concern with authenticity was expressed in the songs themselves, which were produced, structured and presented in a way which set them apart from the glossy manufactured products of mainstream artists. It was expressed too in lyrics which demystified and deconstructed conventional femininity, love, sex and romance, and which analysed social and cultural pressures on women or the tensions of personal relationships in implicitly political ways.<\/p>\n

There is far more to post-punk, and many more women within it, than I have space for here. The Young Lady\u2019s Post-Punk Handbook<\/strong><\/a> provides a good starting-point to other women and bands in the movement, but here are ten from me to kick off:<\/p>\n

1. ESG<\/strong><\/p>\n