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Click on any title or cover to find the item in the SWAN Online Catalog.
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1979-1983 / by Bauhaus
If all single-artist compilations were like this, the world would be a much better place -- while lacking liner notes, or even specific references as to what songs come from where, 1979-1983: Vol. 1, drawing mostly from In the Flat Field and Mask, does a frankly smashing job at capturing the many early high points of Bauhaus' recording career. No real obscurities appear, but as an overview it's just flat-out great, covering many of the band's different facets. As near perfect a starting place for a neophyte listener as any.
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Silent Alarm / by Bloc Party
Much more polished, serious, and straight-ahead than their initial EPs suggested, Bloc Party's debut album, Silent Alarm, reveals them as a band equally informed by taut art-punk and the grand gestures and earnestness of groups like Coldplay and U2. And although it wouldn't hurt if there were more "party" (the celebratory kind, not the political one) in Silent Alarm, it's still a fine debut album with a lot of passion and polish; it's hard not to respect, if not fully embrace, the intensity and integrity of Bloc Party's music.
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Disintegration / by The Cure
The Cure reached the peak of their popularity with the crawling, darkly seductive Disintegration. It's a hypnotic, mesmerizing record, comprised almost entirely of epics. The handful of pop songs don't alleviate the doom-laden atmosphere. The Cure's gloomy soundscapes have rarely sounded so alluring, however, and the songs have rarely been so well-constructed and memorable. It's fitting that Disintegration was their commercial breakthrough, since, in many ways, the album is the culmination of all the musical directions the Cure were pursuing over the course of the '80s.
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Pornography / by The Cure
The Cure's 1982 album has not only become a fan favorite, but it is also regarded as one of the key Goth rock albums in the '80s. It features the songs One Hundred Years; A Strange Day; The Hanging Garden; and more.
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Catching Up With Depeche Mode / by Depecehe Mode
Like its predecessor, People Are People, Catching Up With Depeche Mode attempts to fill in gaps in the group's extensive discography by compiling singles and album tracks taken from their four previous studio LPs.
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Front by Front / by Front 242
Official Version was fantastic, but this album was something else again. Easily one of the greatest industrial albums ever made, bar none, Front by Front hit like a bombshell on its listeners and influenced more bands and songs than can be counted. Even the album art design, with everything from a rough pixel computer font cover to harsh video stills and blunt slogans, is a work of art, perfectly in sync with the electric mania inside.
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Demon Days / by Gorillaz
A side project doesn't usually hit gold, especially when said project is a quirky virtual collective fronted by cartoon characters. But the first, self-titled album by Gorillaz--the brainchild of illustrator Jamie Hewlett and Blur frontman Damon Albarn--actually hit platinum and turned into a surprise worldwide hit. Naturally expectations were a lot higher for Gorillaz's sophomore effort, but Demon Days actually is even better than its predecessor.
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Turn on the Bright Lights / by Interpol
Interpol create literate, atmospheric, moody, trashy post-punk music that recalls '80s faves the Psychedelic Furs. And this is definitely a good thing. While most young bands are content to rhyme "make it" with "fake it," Interpol pens melodramatic tales of tortured and tortuous urban relationships that are truly refreshing. Like their peers the Strokes, they're bright, sophisticated, and meticulous enough to build stirring soundscapes. Turn On the Bright Lights is a must for anyone who missed Echo & The BUnnymen, the Furs, and Joy Division the first time around.
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Closer / by Joy Division
If Unknown Pleasures was Joy Division at their most obsessively, carefully focused, ten songs yet of a piece, Closer was the sprawl, the chaotic explosion that went every direction at once. Joy Division were at the height of their powers on Closer, equaling and arguably bettering the astonishing Unknown Pleasures, that's how accomplished the four members were. Rock, however defined, rarely seems and sounds so important, so vital, and so impossible to resist or ignore as here.
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Unknown Pleasures / by Joy Division
The ten songs inside, quite simply, are stone-cold landmarks, the whole album a monument to passion, energy, and cathartic despair. The quantum leap from the earliest thrashy singles to Unknown Pleasures can be heard through every note, with Martin Hannett's deservedly famous production -- emphasizing space in the most revelatory way since the dawn of dub -- as much a hallmark as the music itself. Songs fade in behind furtive noises of motion and activity, glass breaks with the force and clarity of doom, minimal keyboard lines add to an air of looming disaster -- something, somehow, seems to wait or lurk beyond the edge of hearing. All visceral, all emotional, all theatrical, all perfect -- one of the best albums ever.
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LCD Soundsystem / by LCD Soundsystem
If a music-nerd version of Animal House set in 2005 is ever made, "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House" -- the boisterous opener of LCD Soundsystem -- would make an ideal theme song for the fraternity on which it is based. The self-conscious, awkward music obsessives pledging into this fraternity would have to pass a complex trivia test, own a compulsory list of records, and, as a hazing ritual, ask to dance with someone in public. If LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy were the least bit open to the concept, he could be the fraternity's advisor. Judging from a handful of singles and this album, he'd be more than qualified. Like just about everybody else these days, Murphy's more skilled at creating isolated tracks than making full-lengths, even though this particular full-length has few weak spots and unfolds smoothly as you listen to it from beginning to end.
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Twitch / by Ministry
Twitch was the second studio album by Ministry. The album stepped away from the pop-oriented form of their previous album and moved toward a darker, more aggressive sound in the form of EBM.
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Deep / by Peter Murphy
With Deep, Murphy scored an honest to goodness American radio/MTV hit thanks to the tender, lively "Cuts You Up," a love song with solid energy and an inspired vocal. It was a perfect calling card for the album as a whole, with Murphy in excelsis throughout and his Hundred Men providing everything from the lush, acoustic guitar wash of "Marlene Dietrich's Favorite Poem" to the stripped-down Arabic-tinged funk/hip-hop punch of the commanding "Roll Call." Through it all, Murphy simply sounds like he's having the time of his life, singing both for the sheer joy of it and for the dramatic power of his commanding voice.
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Substance / by New Order
Substance is a double-disc set collecting New Order's singles, including several songs that were never available on the group's albums, at least in these versions. While there are a couple of re-recordings of earlier singles, most of Substance consists of 12" single mixes designed for danceclub play. Arguably, these 12" mixes represent New Order's most groundbreaking and successful work, since they expanded the notion of what a rock & roll band, particularly an indie rock band, could do. Substance collects the best of their remixes, and in the process it showcases not only the group's musical innovations, but also their songwriting prowess.
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The Downward Spiral / by Nine Inch Nails
The Downward Spiral positioned Trent Reznor as industrial's own Phil Spector, painting detailed, layered soundscapes from a wide tonal palette. Not only did he fully integrated the crashing metal guitars of Broken, but several newfound elements -- expanded song structures, odd time signatures, shifting arrangements filled with novel sounds, tremendous textural variety -- can be traced to the influence of progressive rock. So can the painstaking attention devoted to pacing and contrast -- The Downward Spiral is full of striking sonic juxtapositions and sudden about-faces in tone, which make for a fascinating listen.
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Kid A / by Radiohead
As perhaps befitting an album that’s coolly, self-consciously alienating, Kid A takes time to unfold; multiple plays are necessary just to discern the music's form, to get a handle on quiet, drifting, minimally arranged songs with no hooks. This emphasis on texture, this reliance on elliptical songs, means that Kid A is easily the most successful electronica album from a rock band: it doesn't even sound like the work of a rock band, even if it does sound like Radiohead. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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Ok Computer / by Radiohead
Using the textured soundscapes of The Bends as a launching pad, Radiohead delivered another startlingly accomplished set of modern guitar rock with OK Computer. The anthemic guitar heroics present on Pablo Honey and even The Bends are nowhere to be heard here. Radiohead have stripped away many of the obvious elements of guitar rock, creating music that is subtle and textured yet still has the feeling of rock & roll. OK Computer is the album that establishes Radiohead as one of the most inventive and rewarding guitar rock bands of the '90s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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Never Mind the Bollocks / by The Sex Pistols
While mostly accurate, dismissing Never Mind the Bollocks as merely a series of loud, ragged midtempo rockers with a harsh, grating vocalist and not much melody would be a terrible error. Already anthemic songs are rendered positively transcendent by Johnny Rotten's rabid, foaming delivery. His bitterly sarcastic attacks on pretentious affectation and the very foundations of British society were all carried out in the most confrontational, impolite manner possible. Never Mind the Bollocks is simply one of the greatest, most inspiring rock records of all time.
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Floodland / by The Sisters of Mercy
Sister of Mercy's ten track 1988 sophomore album helped solidify their place as a international goth rock force. The highlights include Dominion / Mother Russia; Lucretia My Reflection; and the cult classic This Corrosion.
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The Singles Collect / by Skinny Puppy
It's not a compilation of across-the-board greatest songs, but the Skinny Puppy singles collection does the old 12" Anthology one better by including tracks from the group's three Nettwerk albums of the 1990s. Though a chronologically ordered compilation would have been a better idea, The Singles Collect sounds excellent all the way through and proves that Skinny Puppy was, hands down, the best and most adventurous band of the industrial era.
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Louder Than Bombs / by The Smiths
A compilation of singles, B-sides, album tracks, and BBC sessions assembled for the American market, Louder Than Bombs is an overlong and unfocused collection that nevertheless boasts a wealth of brilliant material.
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