Fire Engines

While a product of the same early-'80s Scottish post-punk movement that gave rise to Orange Juice and Josef K, Fire Engines were far more abrasive and discordant than their pop revivalist peers, forsaking melodies and hooks in favor of noise and fury. Their mix of choppy, erratic guitar blasting, scowly vocal yelps, and ever-so-slightly funky basslines mirrored what was happening around the same time in New York's no wave scene, and the frantic output the band left behind in their short blip of activity would influence new wave/post-punk for generations to come. Fire Engines made several singles and their sole LP, Lubricate Your Living Room, before disbanding in 1981, but they re-formed briefly in the early 2000s, and lived on in the form of multiple compilation releases such as 2005's Codex Teenage Premonition and 2024's Chrome Dawns.