Post-punk and the literary influences that shaped its lyrical voice deserve more attention than they get.

The canonical post-punk lyricists — Ian Curtis, Mark E. Smith, Siouxsie Sioux, Robert Forster, Nick Cave — came out of a tradition that took literature seriously as a reference point in a way that neither punk nor classic rock did. The literary influences ranged from the Beat writers through J.G. Ballard through existentialist fiction, and they show up not just in lyrical references but in structural approaches to how words function in songs.

Mark E. Smith's lyrics are probably the most extreme example of this literary ambition — they're dense with allusion, deliberately obscure, interested in the sound of language as much as its meaning. They read differently than they sound, and they sound differently than they read.

The current post-punk revival has revived the sonic aesthetic without entirely reviving the literary ambition. There are exceptions, but the literary dimension is one of the things that made the original wave extraordinary and that most revival acts don't fully engage with.