Of all the bands to emerge from England’s teeming post-punk talent pool of the late ’70s and early ’80s, Leeds’ Red Lorry Yellow Lorry is perhaps one of the most overlooked. Formed in 1981, the band released five albums in its decade of existence. The last of those, however, featured only leader Chris Reed recording with an odd assortment of musicians in Los Angeles, so for all purposes the band was done by 1989.

Forgotten though the band may be, there’s plenty to admire amongst the music it made, which was a darkened brew spiked by machine-generated beats. Joy Division comparisons were common, though even the most cursory of listens reveals the Lorries (as they at one point rechristened themselves) were much more lively on record. Fortunately, Cherry Red has seen fit to reissue the Lorries’ first two albums packaged with cuts taken from the slew of singles and EPs they released as well as their Peel Sessions and other BBC recordings. Entitled See the Fire: Albums, Singles and BBC Recordings 1982–1987, this set effectively encapsulates the first half of the band’s career and arguably its brightest moments. Indeed, their 1985 debut, Talk About the Weather, is a riveting work, full of goth-tinged cuts flush with razor riffs and hammering beats. Like a less stilted Sisters of Mercy (also from Leeds), to whom they were tangentially related as original drummer Mick Brown went on to play in The Mission with former Sister Wayne Hussy, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry excelled at conjuring the doom and gloom while sonically not being content to wallow in murky tones. Indeed, these songs are jagged in their demeanor, and tracks like “Talk About the Weather,” “Hand on Heart,” and “Hollow Eyes” are some of the period’s best.

Though some consider Weather to be the Lorries’ pinnacle, the second disc containing their follow-up, 1986’s Paint Your Wagon, is just as strong. The opening “Walking on Your Hands” sounds like something Nick Cave might have sung had he employed a drum machine in the Bad Seeds. Those mechanized beats were pushed to the forefront for the album and it would be just as easy to draw a connection to the output of the Wax Trax camp just a few years later. “Head All Fire” has a repeated chorus that along with those rhythms emphasizes the trenchant groove. Same with “Shout at the Sky,” but the band is at its best when Reed and David Wolfenden’s guitars take center stage as on “Crawling Mantra” from the EP of the same name included here. The song is a revelation in more ways than one.

The 11 tracks recorded for the BBC between 1983 and 1984 might seem to be of interest to only those already privy to the Lorries’ charms, but there’s no reason their appeal might be more universal. Live-to-tape, as one might expect, the band is more organic, and it reveals the strength of their songwriting. Cuts like “Strange Dream” and the closing “This Today” sound exceptionally fierce. Overall, the records that the band made stand up (and out) 30 years later and show the Lorries to be worthy of re-appreciation. With the band having made some reunion appearances in the past decade, and as mentioned in the interview with Wolfenden in the liner notes, given word that new material is in the works, the opportunity to do so to a further degree may yet present itself. Until then, this set will more than do.