Remain in Light
1980
Most of it is built on a single chord that never changes, with the interest coming entirely from layers of interlocking rhythm.
★ 8.8
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.
Marquee Moon
1977
The two guitars never play the same part, and the singer, Tom Verlaine, refused to double-track anything, so you hear what happened in the room.
★ 8.1
Synchronicity
1983
The three of them recorded in separate rooms because they could no longer stand each other, and then made the biggest album of the year.
★ 7.9
Disintegration
1989
Robert Smith turned thirty, decided he was finished, and made the biggest record of the band's life about it.
★ 7.7
Closer
1980
Ian Curtis killed himself two months before it came out. The sleeve, chosen beforehand, is a photograph of a tomb.
★ 7.0
Double Nickels on the Dime
1984
Forty-five songs, most under two minutes, and the title is a joke about obeying the speed limit. D. Boon was dead within eighteen months.
★ 7.0
Pretenders
1980
Chrissie Hynde moved from Ohio to London, worked in Malcolm McLaren's clothes shop and wrote for the NME before getting a band together.
★ 6.8
The Unforgettable Fire
1984
The title comes from an exhibition of paintings by Hiroshima survivors that the band saw in Chicago. They recorded much of it in a castle.
★ 5.8
Outlandos d'Amour
1978
Made in scraps of studio time for about fifteen hundred pounds, and Roxanne is named after a poster the band walked past in Paris.
★ 5.0
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
The Hurting
1983
The two of them had played together in a Bath mod band as teenagers, and named this one after a line in a psychology book.
★ 3.9
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