Question: Lowe has been compared favorably to which English rock band formed in 1980?

Context articles: Will Foster
The Company of Snakes
Deep Purple
The Smiths
Coasts (band)
Lowe (band)
New Order (band)
Party of One (band)
Hurricane No. 1
Patife Band

Will Foster is the former keyboardist for the English rock band The Tears.
 Previously, he played with UK art rock band Delicatessen before forming Lodger - alongside Delicatessen singer Neil Carlill, Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey, and Goffey's wife Pearl Lowe.
 Throughout the late 1990s he was a regular collaborator and live musician with London band The Tin Apes.
 He still collaborates with their singer Paul Miller in cult act the Miller Test.
The Company of Snakes were an English rock band formed in 1998, by former members of the English rock band Whitesnake who were also members of The Snakes.
 They released two albums before morphing into M3 during 2004.
Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford in 1968.
 The band is considered to be among the pioneers of heavy metal and modern hard rock, although their musical approach changed over the years.
 Originally formed as a progressive rock band, the band shifted to a heavier sound in 1970.
 Deep Purple, together with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, have been referred to as the "unholy trinity of British hard rock and heavy metal in the early to mid-seventies".
 They were listed in the 1975 "Guinness Book of World Records" as "the globe's loudest band" for a 1972 concert at London's Rainbow Theatre, and have sold over 100 million albums worldwide.
The Smiths were an English rock band formed in Manchester in 1982.
 The band consisted of vocalist Morrissey, guitarist Johnny Marr, bassist Andy Rourke and drummer Mike Joyce.
 Critics have called them the most important alternative rock band to emerge from the British independent music scene of the 1980s."
 Q" magazine's Simon Goddard argued in 2007 that the Smiths were "the one truly vital voice of the '80s", "the most influential British guitar group of the decade" and the "first indie outsiders to achieve mainstream success on their own terms".
 The "NME" named the Smiths the "most influential artist ever" in a 2002 poll, over the Beatles.
Coasts is an English rock band formed in Bristol in 2011.
 The group consists of Chris Caines (Vocals), Liam Willford (Guitar), James Gamage (Bass), David Goulbourn (Keyboards) and Ben Street (Drums).
 They are most notable for their singles "A Rush of Blood" and "Oceans".
 "A Rush of Blood" was named Zane Lowe's 'Hottest Record' in October 2014.
 The single has also featured on "Made in Chelsea".
 "Oceans" has received international media attention and has achieved over four million plays on SoundCloud.
Lowe is a Swedish synthpop band formed in 2002 by Leo Josefsson (vocals/guitar), Rickard Gunnarsson (bass) and Mehdi Bagherzadeh (keyboards).
 The music can be described as emotional pop, contrived with electronic elements.
 Their first three singles ”"The Vanishing"”, ”"Ahead Of Our Time"” and ""Hear Me Out"" quickly earned them the reputation as ”the new hope for Swedish pop”.
 The band has been compared to such artists as Depeche Mode, New Order, Keane and A-ha.
New Order are an English rock band formed in 1980, currently comprising Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris, Gillian Gilbert, Phil Cunningham and Tom Chapman.
 The band was formed in 1980 by Sumner, Morris, and Peter Hook, who were the remaining members of post-punk group Joy Division following the suicide of vocalist Ian Curtis.
 They added Gilbert on keyboards later that year.
Party of One was an indie rock band from Minnesota which released one full-length album, "Caught the Blast", on May 27, 2003 on FatCat Records.
 They also released a single, "Shotgun Funeral", prior to this album, as well as another single, "Snap You Like a Twig", on April 20, 2004.
 The latter single was reviewed favorably by Shoo, a reviewer for Drowned in Sound, who compared it to the music of both Pavement and Ween.
 He also praised the single's B-side, "Star Sky Sierra", as being even better than the single itself.
 The band's members were lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter Eric Fifteen (Eric Johnson), Geoff McCusick, and bassist Terrika Kleinknecht.
 Their music has been described as containing "typically confrontational, at times charmingly naïve messages", and as "punk only by historical association."
 Many critics have also described their music as negative and depressing.
 Julianne Shepherd has praised Fifteen's voice, which she compares to that of Sean Na Na, while Citypages has written that Fifteen "...models his political discontent with the ease of an immortal psychopath in a reusable bomb vest."
Hurricane #1 are an English rock band, formed in Oxford in 1996.
 The band were formed by former Ride guitarist Andy Bell, along with vocalist / guitarist Alex Lowe, bassist Will Pepper and drummer Gareth "Gaz" Farmer.
 After releasing two albums, "Hurricane #1" (1997) and "Only the Strongest Will Survive" (1999), the band broke-up.
 Bell went to join Gay Dad and then eventually Oasis, while Lowe ventured into a solo career.
 Fronted by Lowe, the band reformed in 2014 and released their third album, "Find What You Love and Let It Kill You", in November 2015.
Patife Band ("patife" is a word in Portuguese meaning "stooge" or "knucklehead") is a Brazilian post-punk band formed in São Paulo in 1983 by Paulo Barnabé, initially under the name Paulo Patife Band.
 They are considered to be one of the major exponents of the "Vanguarda Paulistana" movement.
 Characterized by its heavily experimental and almost non-descript musical style, that uses dodecaphonism and atonality as main principles of composition and flirts with many different genres such as jazz, punk rock, traditional Brazilian music and popular music, it was favorably compared to American band Pere Ubu, and one critic at some point called their sound "a crossing between King Crimson and Fear".