Not for Sale

Ennio Morricone was basically the third member of this outfit and he didn't even have to show up to the session. Not for Sale crawled out of the mid-80s Italian underground obsessed with the dust and sweat of Spaghetti Western scores rather than the polished synth-pop dominating the charts. They took that cinematic tension and shoved it through a post-punk filter that sounded like it was recorded in a basement with leaking pipes. It was abrasive, skeletal, and weirdly disciplined for a band that only managed to stick around for two years. The 1986 self-titled effort is where the wheels started to wobble and then fell off entirely. They moved toward a more dissonant, avant-garde mess that felt like they were trying to deconstruct songs before they’d even finished writing them. It’s the sound of a band realizing they have nowhere left to go with a gimmick, even a good one. They flickered out right after, leaving behind a handful of tracks that still sound like a standoff in a deserted plaza.

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