Mid-1980s Washington, D.C. outfit The Generation have resurfaced from a decades-long freeze with their newly unearthed single, “Don’t Know About You.” Originally tracked in the late ’80s and tucked away in a London storage facility for over three decades, the song has finally been restored and remastered at Abbey Road Studios.
The group comprising Tim Becker, Neil Sherman, and Davey X shared close ties with scene contemporaries Modest Proposal and The Mondays, and that punchy, melodic lineage charges directly through the speakers. Listen to it below. Far from an archival museum piece, “Don’t Know About You” bolts forward on a breakneck rush of distorted chord progressions, an agitated percussive pulse, and a humming low-end frequency. It’s thoroughly danceable power-pop, yet it runs entirely on cold-sweat dread.
The spirited vocal delivery captures the twitchy paranoia of being scrutinized by someone unreadable across the room, clawing to shatter their icy demeanor and figure out what they are thinking. There is a strange, cathartic thrill in hearing someone else’s defensive panic move with such bright, melodic velocity. How many other sharp bursts of eighties neurosis are still quietly boxed up across the Atlantic, waiting to prove that our social anxieties never really went away?
