Modern Vampires of the City
2013
Rostam Batmanglij pitched the vocals up and down until they sound like other people, which is why the record keeps slipping out of focus.
★ 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.
Plans
2005
I Will Follow You into the Dark was recorded live in a hallway with one microphone, which is why you can hear the room.
★ 3.9
Hospice
2009
A song cycle set in a hospice ward, about a worker and a dying patient, that most listeners take as being about something else entirely.
★ 3.9
Benji
2014
Mark Kozelek uses real names throughout, and the deaths in it are real deaths in his family. Almost nothing is dressed up as metaphor.
★ 4.0
The Woods
2005
Sleater-Kinney have no bass player, only two guitars and drums, and here producer Dave Fridmann pushed the levels until everything distorts.
★ 4.3
The Crane Wife
2006
The title song is in three parts, and they are scattered across the record out of order. The story is a Japanese folk tale.
★ 4.3
Shields
2012
They threw away a year's work and began again. All four of them write, which is why nothing quite resolves the way you expect.
★ 4.3
Reflektor
2013
They recorded part of it in Jamaica with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem producing, and David Bowie sings on the title track.
★ 4.3
Oracular Spectacular
2008
They wrote the hits partly as a joke about wanting to be famous, and then the joke worked and made them famous.
★ 4.3
Funeral
2004
Three of the band lost close relatives while they were making it, which is where the title came from. Everything is played as though shouted.
★ 4.4
Chutes Too Narrow
2003
James Mercer, who essentially is the Shins, recorded most of it in his own basement. A film later put an earlier song in front of everybody.
★ 4.5
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
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
Neon Bible
2007
They bought a church in Quebec and recorded in it, using the pipe organ, a military choir and a Hungarian orchestra.
★ 5.0
Michigan
2003
The first of the fifty state albums, with Stevens playing most of the instruments himself and naming songs after towns nobody writes about.
★ 5.0
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
2005
Conor Oberst, who is Bright Eyes, put this out on the same day as an entirely electronic companion album. Emmylou Harris sings on three songs.
★ 5.0
Heartbreaker
2000
It opens with Adams and a friend arguing about which Morrissey record a song is on. The whole thing was recorded in fourteen days.
★ 5.0
Halcyon Digest
2010
Bradford Cox, the singer, wrote the last song for a friend who had just died, and it ends by simply stopping partway through.
★ 5.0
Trouble Will Find Me
2013
Two sets of brothers make up the band around the singer, and his brother filmed a documentary about following them on tour.
★ 5.4
The Suburbs
2010
Win Butler and his brother grew up outside Houston, and the record is built around driving through places like it as teenagers.
★ 5.4