Illinois
2005
Stevens announced he would make one of these for all fifty states, then made two and stopped. One song is about John Wayne Gacy.
★ 6.9
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.
Fleet Foxes
2008
The singer Robin Pecknold layers the harmonies so thickly, and drowns them in so much reverb, that it sounds recorded in a stone church.
★ 6.4
For Emma, Forever Ago
2008
Justin Vernon spent three winter months alone in his father's hunting cabin, recovering from a breakup and glandular fever, stacking his falsetto in layers.
★ 6.4
Sea Change
2002
Beck wrote it after a nine-year relationship ended and recorded it in about two weeks. His father wrote the string arrangements.
★ 6.4
Either/Or
1997
Smith doubles his own voice on almost every song, which is why it sounds like two people whispering the same thing slightly apart.
★ 6.1
Bon Iver, Bon Iver
2011
Every song is named after a place, and some of the places do not exist. The cabin has been replaced by horns and pedal steel.
★ 5.7
Helplessness Blues
2011
Singer Robin Pecknold scrapped a finished version and started over. The title song is about not wanting to be anyone special.
★ 5.4
Figure 8
2000
Smith recorded much of it at Abbey Road with full arrangements, and titled it after the ice-skating figure, a loop that goes nowhere.
★ 5.1
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
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
XO
1998
Smith had just played the Academy Awards in a white suit, in front of an audience that had no idea who he was.
★ 4.8
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