I've been exploring this band a little more lately and I find them always interesting, and sometimes enjoyable.

Listening to Rattus Novegicus, and the slightly superior No More Heroes, makes me think of their place in this strange alternate history of punk. The way Talking Heads or Television had a place in the bourgeoning NY punk scene, I can see The Stranglers as this weird branch that was part of the English scene before it got codified into something reduced to something like The Exploited. I can also hear their connections with contemporaries like Devo, or feeding into what would become the instrumentally wilder side in people like Nomeansno and Minutemen, or other Watt projects. They were weird before The Damned got weird.

These are not anthems, they're quirky songs that are driving and sort of aggressive, but also nerdy sounding.

I have a lot of ground to cover, but I like the more new wave Aural Sculpture and am always down for the cinematic "Golden Brown" single.

So far this is a band that I want to love, but instead just kind of like, both because of their quirks.

Yeah, they can be a tough nut to crack. Even on the songs/albums I like they're always very serious (aside from lyrical silliness like Peaches) and controlled sounding*: a 'punk' band with pro chops. I still say NC for overall inventiveness, some solid songs and a killer bass sound (before '90s noise rock beat that sound to death).

*Speaking of sound: there is YT footage of an early '80s concert called No Nukes fest with some incredible footage of the band The Sound. There is also a Stranglers set, which I gotta say, comes across boring and wimpy compared to Adrian Borland and co.

Absolutely not crap for the first two. They became spotty for me after that. J.J. Burnel ruled.

Also, The Sound is not crap.

Unusual mix between a particularly debauched vibe and an unusually sophisticated musical palette. Which is quite a double edged sword, but what makes them interesting.

Burnell and Greenfield are particularly great. I'd throw Burnell in w/ any of the great post-punk bass players.

Albums are patchy for me, but they were knocking them out at quite a pace, and they travelled a lot of distance from albums 1 through 7. From dripping jaded sleaze on 'Peaches' to baroque ornate wistfulness on 'Golden Brown'. That's the real deal.

Even though there is something fundimentally unlikeable about them it's a pretty easy N.C from me.

The Stranglers exhibited an unusual mix of bad-boy rocker vibes and zero-fucks-given swagger, on the one hand, and then thoughtful, artier aspirations toward the sublime on the other.

This is a band that wrote and recorded both "Ugly" and "Skin Deep." In other words, not so easy to pin down.

I've gotten the impression that sometimes they were just having a laugh, and other times they were more focused and trying to make grander statements, pulling out all the stops.

At their best they were/are brilliant, but I have yet to wade into all of it.

Not Crap.

I mainly know the early stuff. Probably the only smart and ironic lyrics I like - Peter Hammill and Bryan Ferry's can get pretty cringeworthy, and I won't even deign to discuss the Steely Dan nonsense that's in vogue here. I'm not always in the mood for the keyboarding styles, but they hit the spot when I am. Favorite song is "Get a Grip On Yourself". Hard NC, waffles for the first song on No More Heroes.

Jj Burnell

Not Crap.

La Folie is my fave, strangely.

Very good band. Also gross and unrepentantly so, far as I know, which is good. We are gross and we need art that reminds us of that.

I like the sellout stuff roughly as much as the first few, which doesn't happen too often.

Akin to Dr Feelgood in that they're a first-rate R&B band playing vicious and ugly, they're coincidental with punk rather than a part of it, whatever that mattered then or matters now. I really like the threatening bar band energy on the earliest albums, although there's quite a bit of filler on them. The Live (X-Cert) album is much more convincing. The Hammond-through-a-phaser thing is one of the all-time great evil sounds. The song-by-song book with Hugh is a depressing read.

Have to give them credit for not cranking out the same thing ad infinitum. The Raven sounds like the work of a different band (and is the one that I most enjoy from end to end). I haven't listened seriously to anything past Gospel, which is worth hearing at least once.

Excellent, idiosyncratic, ugly band. One of my mum’s favourites. I like that Keith Floyd used their music in his shows too.

NC