Best of 2020 #8: Protomartyr - Ultimate Success Today (Domino)

Detroit's post-punk masters Protomartyr have long been a favourite of mine. I picked Relatives in Descent for my best of in 2017. This years album, Ultimate Success Today, has the band in familiar brooding post punk territory, but also sees them pushing in new directions. Some of the punchy, blue-collar noise punk of Idles has begun creeping into their songs. And this album has a decidely freejazz feel to it, with blaring saxophone somewhere in every song. Bandleader Joe Casey's howling and obscured vocals echo Ian Curtis and Mark E. Smith most of the time. This is angry, despondent and defeated inner city post punk at it's best.

Best of 2018 #7: Superorganism - Superorganism (Domino)

I love a fascinating band formation story, and Superorganism has one. Lead singer Orono Niguchi was a teenage exchange student in Maine in the US, but travelled back to Japan on a trip. She found one of her favourite bands, The Eversons, were playing a concert there, so she went and connected with the band. Through the internet, they began making music, which turned into the first Superorganism songs. The band was split up between the US, UK and Australia, but now all live in London in the UK. Their music is an oddball pastiche of corny pop, electronica, disco, lo-fi indy rock and slacker funk. It has a wonderful innocence and naiveity to it as well. This is their debut album and it's excellent!

Best of 2017 #9: Protomartyr - Relatives in Descent (Domino)

Detroit's Protomartyr made a huge splash on the college radio scene with their last album, 2014's The Agent Intellect. 2017's Relatives in Descent sees the band pulling back a bit, becoming more moody and textured, but no less caustic. This is pure post-punk, insistent, dark, noisy and disturbing. Singer Joe Casey is a near dead ringer for Mark E. Smith, if he were American. Casey is as pointed and accusing as MES, but a touch more smooth and less deadpan. The music is driving, moody and repetitive. Snarly and demanding your attention. Great album.

Best of 2016 #3: White Lung - Paradise (Domino)

Watching Vancouver's White Lung mature into the band they have become today has been satisfying. Coming up from a scrappy, sloppy punk band from small town BC to the international acclaim they now enjoy is a great story, and it's come with some great music to boot.

Starting out in 2010 on the small, but influential, label Deranged Records, based out of Gibsons, BC, an isolated community on the BC Sunshine Coast, White Lung started as a pure punk band. In 2014, they jumped to the UK based Domino label. With the label's backing, White Lung took on a more mature sound, keeping the driving anger of a punk band, and melding it with melodic sensibilities. Today, they sound like a post-punk band along the lines of Savages or early Sleater-Kinney.

Paradise is every bit as heavy as 2010's It's the Evil, but vocalist Mish Way-Barber finding a more melodic and direct way of singing. It's not as rough around the edges as a punk band, but instead has the driving insistency of post-punk, a need to be heard, to have the listener to sit down and listen to every note of this album, no matter how difficult it might be to hear.