Triangulating ‘French Post-Punk & New Wave: 1984-1987’ to mean tunes from France and gallic-tongue bits of Belgium and Luxembourg in the mid ‘80s, the vibes on this one are truly of a ripe vintage that feels like tapping into a station at the end of the radio dial, piping in music for exchange students who needed cheering up from staying with a vicar’s family in Nantwich, or something. There’s plenty of anglophilic type new wave-pop jangle, but obviously with a flash of romance and twist of pep below the belt that distinguishes this music – as wth a lot of takes on punk found in this series – from UK styles that were perhaps more indelibly underlined by blues into rock ’n roll, and dub.

Melody and more puckered types of grooves define and propel the 80 minutes of Vol. 2, the longest in this sub-series, as it races from giddy carousel of riffs and motorik ticks to vaguely familiar psych-fuzz hooks, or angelic chanson-pop coos alloyed to angular guitars and sequenced with jerky machine jags and gaunt goth rock on the A-side. B-side they hurtle out of the gates with the sort of proggy-disco-rock thrust that got frog legs twitching in the ‘80s, and keep it up thru shards of sax-heavy punk-funk blare, dramatic punk-pop and songs that mirrored the way folk rock became punk’s sibling ally in the UK during those years.