Formed in 1987 at the University of Illinois near Champaign by Rick Valentin (guitar) and Rose Marshack (bass), Poster Children played an intellectual, challenging, and somewhat pretentious noise-rock.

The sound of the cassette Toreador Squat (self-released in 1988) is a cross between the punk-pop of the Buzzcocks and the neo-psychedelia of Dinosaur Jr. Those recordings, along with other sessions from the following year, constitute their official debut album, Flower Power (Limited Potential, 1990 – Frontier, 1991). The record feels patchy and still struggles to establish a personal voice.

For Daisy Chain Reaction (Twin Tone, 1991 – Sire, 1992), the trio was augmented by guitarist Jeff Dimpsey from Hum. The sound was still immature, but Valentin had the opportunity to unleash his manic style, and with some order imposed on the chaos, songs like If You See Kay now resemble the format of the Pixies. Space Gun and Chain Reaction venture into psychedelia.

With Tool Of Man (Sire, 1992), recorded by the trio of Valentin, Marshack, and new drummer John Herndon, the band entered its major phase, characterized by cleaner harmonics and frequent nods to fashionable alternative rock (Dinosaur Jr, Sonic Youth, Pavement, and so on). Their primary reference, however, remained fIREHOSE, starting with the explosive Dynamite Chair.

The band's ambition can be heard in Clock Street and Outside In, aiming to craft melodic songs without giving up their style of busy—but sometimes inconclusive—instrumentation. The most original harmony appears in the slightly oriental-tinged Tommyhaus. The angry manifesto of Blatant Dis exemplifies their “communist rock,” attempting to translate the emphasis and dialectic of a political speech into music.

The rest of the album overflows with intricate harmonies (Redline, Three Bullets, In My Way), which, however, do not coalesce into a personal idiom. Jim Valentin was added on second guitar, and the dual attack made the sound much more robust.

The EP Just Like You (Twin Tone, 1994), reissued as Not Like You (Sire, 1995) and featuring Sick Of It All and the excellent Voight, along with the album Junior Citizen (Twin Tone, 1995), recorded simultaneously, had all the ingredients to reach a wider audience thanks to a chameleonic variety of styles: on Get A Life (one of their peaks) they are a hard-rock band playing at full volume, but the title track is instead a driving disco number, albeit didactic in a “Brechtian” style; and the spirit of King For A Day is the comedic vaudeville one. Through persistent effort, the band finally hit the anthem they had been seeking for years, Revolution Year Zero, opened by a Native American war cry and carried like a frantic pow-wow.
The experimental tracks are better focused than in the past, even if they mimic other genres, from the dreamlike sounds of shoegaze (He's My Star) to the “stretched-out” atmospheres of acid rock (Drug I Need). Howie Kantoff became the permanent drummer, giving the band a new rhythmic imprint.

Meanwhile, the former drummer, Bob Rising, released his first solo album, Bob O'Clock (Throwrug, 1997), originally recorded in 1993, a work in the spirit of the quirkiest Syd Barrett.

The poppier, and far more spirited, sound of International: RTFM (Sire, 1997) scavenges radio-friendly formats for debris and leftovers that can be pasted together to yield familiar although unusual hybrids. Black Dog starts off with a Nirvana-style vocals/guitar blast after a quiet brooding. OFor1 strums along like a folk lullaby, lulled in a surfing organ theme, until it soars in a choral guitar anthem. A Stooges-derived sneering boogie (with a chorus stolen from Pere Ubu's Non Aligned Pact) detonates Attack. Music Of America drowns a punk-rock "ramalama" in guitar arpeggios and circus drumming (and the coda recalls the Fleshtones' exuberant American Band). A disco pulse propels the novelty 21st Century, that mixes B52's and Blondie. In the end, one is faced with a short history of new wave and punk-rock, the leading genres of the 1980s.
Each song is, technically speaking, a mess: power riffs that overlap theremin wails, tempos that surge and decay, scattered guitar bursts, neurotic drumming, sneering albeit robotic vocals. The ambient/funk/dub/boogie/raga of Afterglow is as intriguing as inconclusive. It is their strength and their weakness. The songs that click are little masterpieces, the songs that do not click (generally the slow ones, with the exception of the singalong Happens Everyday) are impossible bores.

It is not surprising that members of Poster Children are also active as the more experimental Salaryman.

New World Record (SpinArt, 1999) emphasizes the pounding percussive element (the catchy Accident Waiting to Happen, Mr. Goodnight) and the heavy-bass lines (6x6) that emerged on the previous album, but also harks back to their punk origins (Chemicals, Time to Kill). With the exception of the ballad Deadman and the atmospheric samples-laden Planet Earth, the album is one of the rawer and frenzier of their career.

DDD (SpinArt, 2000) could be Poster Children's most complex album, a veritable summary of alternative rock's noncommercial techniques, and the catchy This Town Needs A Fire could be its motto and manifesto. As usual, the percussive aspect is dominant (The Old School And the New, Elf), but the band's style now runs the gamut from noise-rock (Time Share) to psychedelic pop (Strange Attractors) and to power-pop (Rock and Roll). Daisy Changed is a reggae version of Chain Reaction Judge Freeball and Peck N' Paw are eccentric instrumentals reminiscent of side-project Salaryman.

The problem is that each album seems to "remember" too well the previous one, and simply add a few discrete touches to a well-tested formula. No More Songs About Sleep and Fire (Hidden Agenda, 2004). This is basically the definition of background music, whose individual songs are negligible compared with the whole. And thus Jane and The Leader are among the few that stand out. The rest lacks identity, if not passion.

The EP On The Offensive (Hidden Agenda, 2004) collects covers.