Pop Will Eat Itself is best known for electronic, sample-heavy classics like 1989’s This Is The Day… This Is The Hour… This Is This! as well as giving a leg up to frontman Clint Mansell, now a famed film composer. Before all that, though, PWEI was a punk band—a buzzy, crude, catchy one. The band’s 1986 EP The Poppies Say GRRrrr! features songs like “Mesmerized,” a spew of Ramones-esque pop-punk that’s strikingly breezy and sweet compared to the darker, more complex sound PWEI would subsequently forge. “Mesmerized,” which is being streamed below, appears on C86: Deluxe 3-CD Edition, a vastly expanded reissue of the legendary 1986 compilation that codified mid-’80s British indie-pop.
C86: Deluxe 3-CD Edition will be released June 9 via Cherry Red.