Bush Tetras – Boom in the Night (Original Studio Recordings 1980​-​1983)

Oh man I couldn’t tell you how excited I am. For a few days now, I’ve been walking around hearing the ghost of a scraggy bassline and spoken-sung vocals. I’ve been hearing this approximated old post-punk song, trying to recreate it in my head with nothing more than just that bassline and that voice. For a few nights, I’ve been typing in female-fronted american post-punk band nineties in search bar after search bar. After several manhours of searching, I’ve finally found the song, and the album that contains it. I couldn’t tell you how excited I am to finally be listening to Bush Tetras’ Boom in the Night (Original Studio Recordings 1980​-​1983). (The song I was half-hearing just before my head hit the pillow for the last few nights is their most popular recording – Too Many Creeps). 

In many ways, the story of Bush Tetras is a familiar one. A band with an innovative sound and an infectiously energetic live set starts to make waves in a formidable local music scene (in this case, the thriving New York post-punk scene, which spawned a huge roster of future stars: from Talking Heads to Sonic Youth). They become a sort of band’s band, with more popular bands vouching for their quality (in the case of Bush Tetras, among them were the English post-punk band, Gang of Four, who described their sound as being ‘… both jarring and warming.’) Labels find their sound hard to market, and so they find little success outside of the scene, and when there appears to be no record deal in sight, they disband and move on with their lives.

In their first iteration, between 1980 and 1983, Bush Tetras straddled the ground between New York’s two post-post-punk sounds: no wave and new wave. Consisting of guitarist Pat Place, bassist Laura Kennedy and drummer Dee Pop, the Tetras had a stripped-down sound: part punk, part funk. They were a staple at gigs in the city, before disbanding and moving on with life post-post-post-punk, becoming visual artists and elementary school teachers. But as fate would have it, and as is the case with so many influential artists who get called things like ‘ahead of their time’ and ‘leftfield’, Bush Tetras’ music ended up having a life of its own after 1983. Part of it has to do with the fact that the New York scene at that time produced several Tetras-like classics – punk-inspired danceables by short-lived bands. The sort of song you can find in this incredible compilation album (that includes Bush Tetras’ Can’t Be Funky): an album about which I will speak soon. And part of it has to do with how catchy each of their tunes is. 

The result of this renaissance is also a familiar story, but a happier one. A grey-haired, much-wiser band gets together a couple of decades after their initial brush with sustained artistic success. With a combination of those who remain from their original audience and an entirely new, younger audience that has discovered their music through movies and mixtapes and shows, they’re able to reform as an occasionally-gigging band. In the case of Bush Tetras, they’ve been performing on-and-off since 1995, even releasing new material since. But, to me, none of it has the immediacy (and just the straight-up charm) of Boom in the Night – one of the most infectious, minimal, and danceable post-punk records I’ve heard.