“Though quintessentially punk records, their first two albums featured tricky time signatures, a four-part musical suite, and songs that clocked in at seven minutes”: The Stranglers were always more prog than you thought

The Stranglers.

Even as they rode the wave of punk to the upper reaches of the charts, there were always undeniable psychedelic and prog influences to The Stranglers that no amount of year-zero history rewriting could disguise. One of them had a beard and was pushing 40, for Wakeman’s sake.

But the critical rod that was used to beat the Guildford four-piece – they had previous in other outfits (frontman Hugh Cornwell fleetingly playing in a band with Richard Thompson and keyboardist Dave Greenfield in prog band Rusty Butler), and they wrote unapologetically complex, keyboard-driven songs – was also what enabled them to transcend the genre.