Here's a Twilight Zone episode for you: a rock band, as any other might be, except for a few catches: The drums play regimented, disco-stomp beats, the bass takes a melodic lead, the guitar hammers out rhythmic chops, the vocals chant interchangeable phrases sure to get you lost on whether this was bar seven or bar eight. What madness concocted such an inverted rock world? The madness in question is a product of a post punk ethos, a dancefloor pathos, and an ultimately unconcerned logos. Get ready for the rhythm, we call this Twilight Zone episode, "dance punk."
The Source
While the frame of dance punk is vast and somewhat smeared, its most prominent roots lead us back to post punk England with the band Gang of Four. These late-'70s punks defied several conventions with more minimal, dance-centric drum lines and interlocking guitar and bass compositions that traded places as melodic and harmonic leads. These base tenets established the foundation for the dance punk blueprint, where consistent trade-offs between the guitar and bass as lead players and decidedly punchy and danceable rhythms made for an unrelenting musical backdrop upon which the topography of a punk rock lyrical map could lay. Where previous punk rock iterations may have relied on furious, unceasing, two-minute compositions laced with buzzsaw distortion and bullet train drum lines, dance punk alluded to a different strain of rebellion.
The Scoop
It's no secret that dance punk has always existed as an offshoot of punk rock. Never truly rising to the prominence or influence of other popular strands of the genre, dance punk mostly dissipated into the ether before its millennial revival. Early 2000s bands like The Rapture and Bloc Party, hungry for vintage sounds and somewhat poisoned by irony, implemented heavy dance punk influences in their works Echoes and Silent Alarm, respectively, stoking the dance punk flame for a new audience. The joke in all of this? The early 2000s weren't as recent as you imagine. Another twenty years have gone by and such bands have once again waned in relevance. Tale as old as time.
The Verdict
Maybe dance punk was never meant to rise to the same prominence as other punk flavors. Maybe it’s that the people would rather mosh or headbang than leave it all on the dancefloor. Perhaps guitarists would rather hammer out power chords repeatedly than hammer out a jangly lead repeatedly. Perhaps the bassists of the world have yet to find their strength to step into the melodic spotlight. It could be a combination of all of the above and none of the above. In any case, there's no shame in dancing, like if English post-punks and Kevin Bacon in Footloose ever had anything in common.
Key listens
- Entertainment! – Gang of Four (1979)
- Echoes – The Rapture (2003)
- Silent Alarm – Bloc Party (2005)
- Key track: “House of Jealous Lovers” – The Rapture (2003)