From the moment I first heard and saw them in December 2018 at The Good Mixer, I’ve loved Fontaines D.C. This may be their best song yet.

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When Tony Wilson signed A Certain Ratio to Factory Records in 1979 he told the world they were “the new Sex Pistols.” They weren’t, but they did leave their mark on Manchester music as one of the first bands to incorporate funk into an industrial take on postpunk.

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Is there a better opening line to a song than Julian Cope’s delighted response to pop stardom: “Bless my cotton socks, I’m in the news!”?

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Yesterday, as every good Catholic knows, was Good Friday – the counter-intuitively named day when Jesus was crucified. So it was only right and fitting that I spent the evening watching The Jesus and Mary Chain at The Roundhouse. And it was doubly appropriate that they finished their set with their cataclysmic anthem Reverence.

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When I first saw and heard Fontaines D.C. they were the most exciting new guitar band I’d seen in decades. I wasn’t the biggest fan of their second album but Dave Clarke’s remix transforms the song into a dancefloor banger.

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It’s one of life’s great musical pleasures that at the age of 70 Kim Gordon is still making loud abrasive music that’s every bit as antisocial as she was back in downtown NYC in 1981.

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Not many bands slipped through the cracks of my post-punk world in the early 80s but Modern English seem to have passed me by completely.

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This record, championed by my fellow music scribe Ged Babey, sounds so familiar, touching so many bases from my punk past, yet also sounds fresh. And that’s because, while it’s true that these musicians are no spring chickens, this is a new release.

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New year, New Order. This was a landmark release in so many ways when it came out in March 1983. Firstly because it marked the moment postpunk merged with electronic dance music, and made the link between 70s disco and 80s house music. Secondly because Blue Monday went on to become the biggest-selling 12-inch single of all time.

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When I first heard Xmal Deutschland in the early 1980s I thought I was listening to something new by Siouxsie And The Banshees. I’m sure I was not alone.

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