Bush Tetras

The Bush Tetras were prescient outliers on the New York underground music scene of the late '70s and early '80s. While their music was taut and aggressive like punk, Pat Place's guitar added an inspired dissonance that reflected her connections to the city's no wave scene (she worked with James Chance in the Contortions and James White & the Blacks). Their crucial early-'80s recordings (collected on 1995's Boom in the Night) also showed the influence of dub in their rubbery basslines and sense of space, and the group's chaotic but muscular attack anticipated the mid-'80s noise rock movement as well as post-punk. 2021's Rhythm and Paranoia: The Best of Bush Tetras was a career-spanning anthology that's the best introduction to their music, and after the death of longtime drummer Dee Pop, Sonic Youth's Steve Shelley joined the band and produced 2023's They Live in My Head.