Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
2002
Reprise refused it, so the band bought the tapes back, streamed the record free, and then sold it to another label owned by the same company.
★ 8.4
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.
Daydream Nation
1988
A Gerhard Richter candle painting on the sleeve, a double album made on almost no money, and the last thing before they signed to a major.
★ 7.7
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
1998
Jeff Mangum wrote it after reading Anne Frank's diary, played a musical saw on it, and then more or less disappeared for a decade.
★ 7.6
Slanted and Enchanted
1992
Recorded for about eight hundred dollars in the drummer's garage in Stockton. He later took to greeting the audience with handstands.
★ 7.5
Exile in Guyville
1993
Phair wrote it as a song-by-song answer to Exile on Main St., in the same running order, from home cassettes she had made alone.
★ 6.9
Let it Be
1984
They called it Let It Be mostly to annoy people. The songs run from a joke about answering machines to Westerberg howling that he is unsatisfied.
★ 6.9
Sound of Silver
2007
All My Friends is one piano figure repeated for seven and a half minutes while everything else is built up around it.
★ 6.7
Weezer (The Blue Album)
1994
Ric Ocasek of the Cars produced it, and Spike Jonze cut the Buddy Holly video into an old episode of Happy Days.
★ 6.7
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
Pinkerton
1996
Named after a character in Madame Butterfly. It failed so badly that Rivers Cuomo disowned it for a decade before everyone decided it was great.
★ 6.0
Dear Science
2008
Guitarist and producer Dave Sitek moved the band out of Brooklyn to a house in Malibu, and the record came back funkier and less claustrophobic.
★ 5.7
Lost in the Dream
2014
Adam Granduciel spent two years and a dozen studios on it, mostly rerecording parts he had already finished, in the grip of severe anxiety.
★ 5.7
Turn on the Bright Lights
2002
The bass lines run as counter-melodies rather than following the guitars, which is why so much of it sounds like two songs at once.
★ 5.6
Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not
2006
The band's early demos spread on burned CDs and file-sharing sites, passed around by fans rather than the band, long before any label appeared.
★ 5.6
Teen Dream
2010
Recorded in a converted church in upstate New York, and built almost entirely from an organ, a drum machine and a slide guitar.
★ 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Fever to Tell
2003
There is no bass player, just Nick Zinner's guitar and Brian Chase's drums under Karen O's yelping. Maps was written about missing someone.
★ 4.4
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
Kill the Moonlight
2002
Spoon leave most of the space empty, so a tambourine or a single piano note does the work a guitar solo usually would.
★ 4.4
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
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
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
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
Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
2009
The band come from Versailles and had spent ten years making records almost nobody outside France bought before this one arrived.
★ 4.2
Z
2005
Jim James recorded the earlier albums in a grain silo on his grandfather's farm for the echo. This is the first made in a real studio.
★ 4.2
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
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
Is This It
2001
Singer Julian Casablancas sang through a guitar amplifier to get that flattened, distant voice, and the whole thing was recorded in a basement.
★ 3.8
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