While these days Portland has earned such a reputation as a hipster mecca that it is parodied in mainstream media, there was a time when it was more backwoods than urbane, and flannel shirts, Redwings, and mustaches were found on rednecks not metrosexuals. Hell, it felt like a big small town when I lived there in the ’90s, so I can only imagine what it was like in the late ’70s and early ’80s. (For a first hand account, check out “Night of the Living Rednecks,” a story about Portland Jello Biafra tells on Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death.) It was into this environment that the Neo Boys were born.

Sprung from the ashes of Formica & the Bitches, the Neo Boys were started by twin sisters Kim and KT Kincaid (on vocals and bass, respectively) and Pat Baum (drums). Girls playing punk rock on their own instruments would have been an anomaly anywhere at the time, but in Portland was unheard of. With three different guitarists—Jennifer Lobianco, Carol Stienel, and Meg Hentges—over the course of their five years, the band proved to be a powerhouse for both the topsy-turvy punk derivations they played and for the cultural impact of their very being. Though history is never a linear succession of events, it’s hard to imagine Northwest bands like Bikini Kill and Sleater-Kinney coming into existence had the Neo Boys not been in the world first.

Listening to Sooner or Later, the new two-disc compilation by K Records of pretty much everything the Neo Boys put to tape, it’s easy to spot the signposts of the era: hubris over proficiency, confidence excusing heavy-handedness, and certain joie de vivre overriding everything. The earliest material on the comp reveals the band as scrappy upstarts playing two- and three-chorded rock that careens as much for the pent-up energy driving it as for the band’s inexperience. The first few cuts sound like they were cut live (a lack of notes on what’s what is the album’s most glaring shortcoming), with leadoff track “Kids” revealing the band at their most anemic and raw: bass and guitar emitting the same chord pattern while Baum stomps out a simplistic beat. Where the Sex Pistols before them may have snarled, “We don’t care,” Kim sings, “I don’t care,” expressing a personalized version of apathy. That MO carries over to “Put a Penny,” wherein she lays out a laundry list of needs over the barest of musical backing.

By the time of their self-titled EP, released by The Wipers’ Greg Sage on his Trap label in 1980, the bands’ chops had improved to the point that they had real hooks to their songs, without sacrificing any of their verve. “Rich Man’s Dreams,” which shows the band taking on broader lyrical concerns than previously, matches chicken-scratched riffs with vocals effusive and musical. Meanwhile, “Never Comes Down” is erratic and races with the kind of adrenalized groove that characterized bands like the Au Pairs and Bush Tetras.

The second disc shows a greater improvement in fidelity at the same time that the Neo Boys diversified their sound. “In Disguise,” from the band’s Crumbling Myths EP from 1982, doesn’t have the same fervor, but its brooding tone is just as effective. Tracks like “Split” and “Days in Heaven,” which one has to assume are some of the songs cut when Crumbling Myths was trimmed from an LP to an EP, shows new nuances to the band’s songwriting in terms of both music and content, while it’s hard not to hear The Slits and Kleenex in “Beyond Borders” and “Under Control.” There are more live cuts like “Obscure Emotion,” but here the crowd claps politely where the one on the aforementioned “Kids” was audibly hooting and hollering.

I’m sure the Neo Boys were underappreciated in their time, and subsequently, for many years afterwards. As such, K has done the world a great service by putting their recordings back out in the world. The spirited nature of the band leaps out as soon as one pushes play, and it’s that spirit that no doubt has helped this music endure.