Aha Shake Heartbreak
2004
Three brothers and a cousin, raised on a Pentecostal preaching circuit, playing scrappy Southern garage rock. Britain loved it years before America noticed.
★ 3.1
The Albums canon
Sourced and spun.
Every record chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 542 records or filter by genre, artist, and year.
Browse all 542 records or filter by genre, artist, and year.
Surfer Rosa
1988
Steve Albini recorded the drums in a bathroom to get the echo, taped studio chat between songs, and finished the whole thing in ten days.
★ 3.6
Monster
1994
They plugged back in on purpose after two quiet albums, and for years it was the record most often found in second-hand shops.
★ 3.6
Diesel and Dust
1987
The band toured remote Aboriginal communities in the outback first, and wrote the record afterward about what they had seen there.
★ 4.0
Sublime
1996
Bradley Nowell's dalmatian appears on the cover and in half the songs. He died two months before the record came out.
★ 4.3
Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me
1987
Eighteen songs across a double album, deliberately in as many different styles as the band could manage, recorded in a French farmhouse.
★ 4.4
Extraordinary Machine
2005
An earlier version leaked online and fans mailed apples to her label demanding its release. She rerecorded almost all of it anyway.
★ 4.4
You're Living All Over Me
1987
J Mascis played much of the drumming as well as the guitar, and played loud enough that the rest of the band wore earplugs.
★ 4.8
White Blood Cells
2001
Recorded in Memphis in about three days. Michel Gondry animated the video for Fell in Love with a Girl entirely out of Lego bricks.
★ 4.8
Vs.
1993
The band refused to make videos for any of it, and it sold nearly a million copies in five days anyway.
★ 4.8
Vitalogy
1994
It came out on vinyl two weeks before the CD, and the sleeve reproduces an 1899 medical book the band found and liked.
★ 4.8
Transatlanticism
2003
One line repeats for eight minutes on the title track, with an instrument added at a time until the whole band is playing at once.
★ 4.8
Parachutes
2000
It cost a few thousand pounds to make. Chris Martin has said Yellow came from looking up at the stars outside a Welsh studio.
★ 5.0
Morning Phase
2014
Beck's father wrote the string arrangements, as he had on Sea Change. It won Album of the Year and Kanye West objected onstage.
★ 5.0
Hot Fuss
2004
Mr. Brightside was the first song Brandon Flowers and Dave Keuning ever wrote together, and they never managed to write a bigger one.
★ 5.0
Being There
1996
Singer Jeff Tweedy asked the label to sell the double album at single-album price and took the royalty cut himself so people could afford it.
★ 5.1
Vampire Weekend
2008
Four Columbia students made it in dorm rooms and a church basement, and spent years answering for borrowing from African guitar records.
★ 5.4
Badmotorfinger
1991
It came out two weeks after Nevermind and got buried. Soundgarden spent the tour opening for Guns N' Roses instead.
★ 5.5
Californication
1999
Guitarist John Frusciante rejoined after years of addiction, having to relearn how to play, and wrote the melodies that sold fifteen million copies.
★ 5.7
Amnesiac
2001
Recorded at the same sessions as Kid A and held back eight months. The band spent years insisting it was not a collection of leftovers.
★ 5.7