10 Punk Bands Essential To Me: The 2000's

Once again Lord Rutledge and I bring you the concept of what we like to call "tandem posts". This time, we bring you bands of the 2000's (2000 - 2009 to be exact). Again, it was not an easy task to narrow it down to only ten, but somehow I managed. Go check out Faster and Louder to see Josh's take on his favorites of the era. And like our previous tandem post about our essential 1990's punk bands, we have no idea what the other is selecting! To listen to some songs from these bands, plus more from this time period, check out my playlist at the end of this post. 

10. The Busy Signals 

The first thing that hits you when you drop the needle on The Busy Signal's debut LP is singer Analucia McGorty's vocals. It's the kind of voice that transports you to another world. The songs are so charismatic you forget you're basically listening to a scrappy underground punk record. Their LP came out in 2007 on Dirtnap Records and it's got this quality about it that makes you like it instantly. It's gutter pop perfection, like razor blades wrapped in cotton candy. Think The Rezillos meets The Pretenders at a Plimsouls gig. 

9. Tranzmitors

I feel like Vancouver's Tranzmitors have the same chemical make up as The Briefs but where The Briefs embraced 70's british punk like The Damned and The Buzzcocks, these guys leaned more into a sound more akin to new wave like Elvis Costello/Joe Jackson/ meets The Jam but drenched in XTC. Tranzmitors create such solid and earnest songs that they tend to sink into your brain and don't scrub out very easily. But then again, I haven't tried and I see no reason to do so, ever. 

8. FM Knives

I remember when this record came out in 2002, it seemed to have dropped out of the sky! It was on some weird ass label called Moo La-La Records. Seriously, who the hell were these guys?! Because this record was a titan, a 50 story tall Kaiju just laying waste to the American West Coast. What's even crazier is that this album has such an air of effortless cool to it. Fm Knives took the sounds of British punk, new wave, and power pop and molded it into something fresh, new and brilliant. 

7. The Epoxies

When Dirtnap Records released The Epoxies debut LP in 2002, it set my world ablaze. Here was a band that had these killer new wave chops and constructed these songs that were super irresistible. Vocalist Roxy Epoxy and no issues belting out these anthemic choruses like she was born to do so. The Epoxies had it all and they ruled my 2000's with a golden sceptre. They were the bastard children of Blondie, Devo, and Adam Ant and they owned it. The Epoxies breathed fire into a genera that seemed tired and passé.

6. The Richmond Sluts

Disaster records put out the band's debut record back in 2001 and I remember listening to this album so much, over and over! To this day, I believe it's the era's most criminally overlooked album. San Francisco's Richmond Sluts took glam rock shake, power pop hooks, a cool mod pose and lit the fuse which resulted in a 40 mile high mushroom cloud in my brain. These guys actually played a tiny venue outside Phoenix during this time and they relocated the roof of that joint into the next county. To this day it's one of my favorite gigs I've ever attended.   

5. Le Shok

Technically Le Shok's debut record came out in 1999, so I'm cheating a bit. But I omitted them from my 1990's list because I didn't really get into them until the 2000's. When I first heard these guys, I didn't know what the hell to think. But something about their music was melodic, yet abstract enough that it kept drawing me in until I was permanently impaled. What do you get when you vomit up The Fall, Billy Childish, and The Germs? I don't know but when you piss all over that pile you'll get Le Shok.  

4. Carbonas

These southern gents released their debut LP back in 2003 and only kept getting better from there. By the time their third long player came out in 2007 on Goner Records, they reached legendary status and walked tall as gods amongst men. These songs were dripping with angst and rebellion. These are the kind of songs you play on a Friday night when you're looking for all kinds of no good. The thing that set this bands apart was that their songs had so much gall strut. As most great rock n roll songs do!  

3. The Hex Dispensers

Not since the Misfits has a band combined horror and macabre science fiction with punk rock ever so keenly. The Hex Dispensers were smart, bewildering, and wrote Ramones style punk rock that would knock your Chuck Taylors half way down the block. Alien Snatch Records blew my universe apart when they released their debut LP back in 2007. Frontman Alex Cuervo played these infectious, menacing punk songs hard, fast and mean as hell. Almost as if he were possessed by a demonic entity to do so.

2. The Riffs

It was the year 2000, we survived the deadly Y2K scare that was supposed to take civilization as we knew it back to the stone age. But apparently nobody told these Portland knuckle draggers! The Riffs brought punk back to it's rock n roll roots and it was an amazing breath of fresh air. You slow down your guitar riffs to Johnny Thunders/Steve Jones style, write anthemic choruses like Blitz or Cocksparrer and you get some tough ass sounding songs that to this day remain bulletproof. 

 

1. The Briefs

Their debut LP came at me like a comet entering earth's atmosphere back in 2008 and the world hasn't been the same since. How can you not like a band that takes manic new wave guitar riffs, power pop hooks, and wraps it all up in 70s punk snarl. Their songs are fun, catchy and sticky as bubble gum on the soles of your brothel creepers! To this day, these dudes remain one of my favorite modern punk bands even though I've never seen them live. Hopefully that'll change someday soon!