It’s the last day of the shortest month of the year but as the adage says, big things come in small packages. This week sees the release of at least a couple records that I feel confident will rank highly on my Best of 2025 list come December. I review: the masterful sixth album from UK group Doves; Ride singer/guitarist Andy Bell‘s third solo album which gets into krautrock and Madchester territory; Nothing by DARKSIDE who are now a trio and sounding more than ever like a band and not a studio project; the final album from The Chills which features songs from the late Martin Phillips’ archive of early unrecorded material; Microtonic by bdrmm who have shoegaze in the rearview; and the latest from XL Records boss Richard Russell’s collaborative Everything is Recorded moniker.

Over in Notable Releases, Andrew reviews the latest from Panda Bear (I like this one a lot too and have a few words about it below), Cloakroom, Shygirl, and more.

It was a busy week for news and announcements, and here are the Indie Basement-friendly headlines: R.E.M. reunited in Athens, GA for Michael Shannon & Jason Narducy’s Fables of the Reconstruction tour; Autechre announced their first North American tour in a decade; Stereolab will be back this fall to tour (with maybe a cool opener); Pixies & Spoon is a cool double bill (though no NYC date right now); Elbow will tour the US and Canada this fall; and Daniel Avery, Working Men’s Club and Ghost Culture have formed a promising new band.

See you in March. This week’s reviews are below.

ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Doves – Constellations for the Lonely (EMI North)
The UK alt-rock veterans’ sixth album and first in five years is another stunner

“You walk out that door, then you’re walking out forever.” Manchester greats Doves seem to thrive on catastrophe, disaster and tragedy. Brothers Jez and Andy Williams and Jimi Goodwin formed Doves from the literal ashes of their previous, dance-oriented group Sub Sub, when their studio burned down in 1996. They’ve faced various hurdles over the years — many personal, some global — but each time things seem insurmountable, Doves turn it into triumph. That mix of heartbreak and hope is also central to their soaring, melancholic sound. So what now? Coming back after a decade to release the fantastic The Universal Want in 2020, Doves’ return was first slowed by the pandemic and then ground to a halt when frontman Jimi Goodwin’s mental health and addiction issues caused their 2022 tour to be canceled. (Goodwin will be sitting out Doves’ UK tour to work further on his recovery.) Once again, it looked like the end of Doves, but they say that what kept the band together was immediately getting back to the studio to make another album.

And what an album. Constellations for the Lonely, the sixth Doves album, is another stunner. Doves are a genre unto themselves and nobody does it better than them, creating sweeping rock epics with a crate-digger’s love of rare grooves, a composer’s ability to conjure emotions though cinematic sonic tableaus, and an architect’s skill with constructing towering structures within the stereo field. Oh, and write great songs with anthemic choruses that tug at the heartstrings without a hint of treacle. Constellations is all highs, each song full of magic little moments that layer together to form something even greater, from the echoing piano riff in “Renegade,” to the interlocking guitar arpeggiations of “In the Butterfly House,” the piercing post-punk bassline that cuts through the choral haze of “A Drop in the Ocean,” and the swooning strings that drench the waltzing “Last Year’s Man.” Jimi Goodwin’s world-weary vocals add real heart, but Jez Williams takes lead on a number of songs this time, including the album’s best song, “Cold Dreaming,” which is somewhere between David Axelrod’s phantasmagoric technicolor psychedelia and Minnie Ripperton’s “Le Fleurs.” Constellations for the Lonely is a life-affirming instant classic and another reminder to never count Doves out.

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DARKSIDE – Nothing (Matador)
Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington’s proggy electronic project becomes an actual band with the addition of forward-thinking drummer Tlacael Esparza

DARKSIDE, the on-again/off-again duo of Nicolás Jaar and Dave Harrington, have been equally known for their meticulously crafted studio albums and transforming those recordings into electro-prog epics when they play live. When it came time to tour for 2021’s Spiral, they drafted in drummer Tlacael Esparza, who had played with Harrington in Jaar’s ’00s-era band and just a few years prior had patented Sensory Percussion which can turn any drum kit into a sample-triggering/manipulating device. “Playing music with Tlac, a whole world opened up,” Jaar told The Quietus, adding that it completely altered DARKSIDE’s DNA. It also turned them into a band. Nothing is still full of richly textured, immaculately constructed sounds, but it also feels like three highly skilled musicians and performers feeding off each other in a room. Even if songs have clearly gone through a lot of post-production and editing (and they have), there is an electricity here the two previous albums didn’t have, from stormers like “Graucha Max” (Can meets Nashville disco) and the Brazilian-inspired “American References” to dubby album opener “SLAU” and the soulful, two-part “Hell Suite.” Harrington gets to show quite a range of playing with all this and lets his jammy side fly free a couple times. Nothing also sounds like it was custom-built for festivals, a calling card  for bookers that says “look what we can do now.” It’s also exciting to think how these songs will expand and transform once they start playing them live.

Nothing by DARKSIDE

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Andy Bell – pinball wanderer (Sonic Cathedral)
The Ride singer-guitarist dips into krautrock and baggy Manchester sounds for his third solo album

Some artists make solo records that are indistinguishable from from the bands they’re in. Then there are musicians like Ride’s Andy Bell, whose albums under his own name are chances for him to play in other sandboxes. pinball wanderer is Bell’s third solo album (not counting his electronic alter ego GLOK) and is his furthest-reaching record yet and there’s nothing on here that sounds like Ride (or Hurricane #1 or Oasis or Beady Eye). Where to start? How about his cover of The Passions’ 1981 single “I’m in Love With a German Filmstar” which predicted the shoegaze/dreampop scene that would emerge just a few years later. Bell puts his own spin on it and got former One Dove singer Dot Allison to sing on it and Neu!’s Michael Rother to play guitar on it. Speaking of kruatrock, instrumental “Music Concrete” has Can’s grooves in its DNA, with just a dash of Madchester… which leads to “green apple ufo” that tips more than a Reni-brand bucket hat to The Stone Roses’ shufflebeat classic “Fools Gold.” There’s also “Madder Lake Deep” which Andy accurately describes as a “Cocteau Twins-ish watercolour portrait of a dream,” and the folky groover that is the album’s sunny title track. Bell blisses out for the album’s final two songs: “The Notes You Never Hear,” and “Space Station Mantra” which both show off his formidable vocal harmony abilities. pinball wanderer plays like a guided tour through Bell’s record collection and if it doesn’t hang together the way 2022’s Flicker did, all of its individual parts are a whole lot of fun.

pinball wanderer by Andy Bell

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Panda Bear – Sinister Grift (Domino)
Noah Lennox does it again on this very listenable, breezy album of tropical, harmony-laden pop

Coming on the tail of Reset, his wonderful collaboration with Sonic Boom, Panda Bear is back with Sinister Grift, another wonderful showcase of Noah Lennox’s ability to channel Brian Wilson while bringing something new to a very familiar style. Underneath all those layers of perfect harmony is some very trippy production — the “sinister” to this otherwise poppy album — but the weirdness stays mostly in the background, making for one of the most satisfying, breezy records of Panda Bear’s career.

Andrew reviews Sinister Grift in more detail over in Notable Releases.

Sinister Grift by Panda Bear

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The Chills – Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs (Fire Records)
The late Martin Phillipps returned to his archive of early unrecorded songs for what turned out to be The Chills’ posthumous final album

In the years before his untimely death in July, The Chills frontman Martin Phillipps talked of how he was going back through his archive of dozens (hundreds?) of early unrecorded songs and finally putting them to tape for a new album. This years-in-the-making passion project was finished with the current band, who gave their blessing, as did Phillipps’ family and management. “The album seemed like an easy option,” Martin said, though also noting it wasn’t as easy as it first seemed. “All of the songs needed varying degrees of rewriting; a 60-year old man couldn’t just stick to the lyrics of those formative years. And some of the songs were just vague recollections, incomplete, only blossoming during recording.”

The result is a wonderful double album that pulls off a neat trick: you get the melodies a great songwriter in the middle of a prolific and creative peak filtered through the same person, now older with more life experience. He also got some extra help from friends and fans like Crowded House‘s Neil Finn and Elroy Finn, and Tiny Ruins’ Hollie Fullbrook. Songs that may have not seemed good enough at the time were clearly rough gems that just needed a little extra care (and better than a lot of successful musicians’ best work), and Phillips and the band give them just the right touch in the studio, neither keeping the sound in the past, nor modernizing things too much. There are heavenly pop hits, angular rockers and the kind of yearning, mystical ballads that Phillips would become known for in the ’90s. Martin’s death  was a shock, but Spring Board is a terrific sendoff to him and The Chills, and a perfect full-circle moment, too.

Spring Board: The Early Unrecorded Songs by The Chills

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bdrmm – Microtonic (Rock Action)
Is “post-shoegaze” a thing? If so, this UK band are it and are very good at it on their third album

The finest band from Hull, England since The Housemartins, bdrmm got their start in the early pandemic days of 2020 as died-in-wool shoegazers, taking cues from the ’90s OGs, nailing the sound but not forgetting to write great songs while doing so. Since then, the genre has absolutely blown up thanks to TikTok but bdrmm have all but left shoegaze in the dust.  They signed to Mogwai’s Rock Action for their 2023 sophomore album, I Don’t Know, which saw them dive headfirst into electronics and find their own sound in the process. Microtonic takes that even further. Is post-shoegaze a genre already? If not this is it. The band are still trafficking in hazy, blissed out sonics but are coming at it from unusual routes, with everything from ambient techno, post-rock, power electronics, Reznor-Ross soundtracks, Boards of Canada haze, the late-’90s comedown records (Homogenic, Music Has a Right to Children, The K&D Sessions) and more in the mix. It’s powered almost entirely by vibe, but they are entirely dialed-in and there are some stunners here, including ratatat acid house banger “goit” (ft Working Men’s Club), the ascending “Sat in the Heat,” masterful headbobber “Infinity Peaking,” the subzero atmosphere of “In the Electric Field,” superior synthgaze jam “Lake Disappointment,” and especially “Clarkycat,” a danceable nightdrive of a song that builds and builds to a gorgeous crescendo (and earns extra points for its Brass Eye reference of a title). Would bdrmm be bigger if they’d kept making records like their debut? Possibly, but then we wouldn’t get a great album like this. Keep charting your own path.

Microtonic by bdrmm

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Everything is Recorded – Temporary (XL)
XL boss Richard Russell’s collaborative downtempo project taps Bill Callahan, Sampha, Jah Wobble, Alabaster dePlume and more for third LP

Everything is Recorded is the moniker for XL Records head Richard Russell’s collaborative project which he started in 2018. It’s also the project’s ethos, with Russell creating backing tracks from samples, from old reggae and soul records to the sounds of banging on a banister or stomping on the floor. Everything is recorded and becomes fodder for his downtempo collages. Temporary is his third album and Russell switches up his MO this time, placing melody ahead of rhythm and words (previous albums were created around “rhythm, words, melody,” in that order). It makes for the most intimate Everything is Recorded album yet, but one that fits in perfectly with the previous two, with songs floating in the ether like you’re in a state between dreaming and waking. Bill Callahan duets with Noah Cyrus on spectral country number “Porcupine Tattoo,” which melts directly into “Never Felt Better” that features both Sampha and Florence Welch. Callahan turns up later on the album for “Norm,” a tribute to Norm MacDonald, while Florence pops up again on “Firelight” which also features BERWYN and Alabaster dePlume. Russell hasn’t entirely abandoned beats this time, though. “Losing You,” one of Temporary’s highlights, matches Sampha, Yazz Ahmed and the great Jah Wobble against a loping soul beat. At times things are a little too ethereal, and its hard to grasp onto the music — I prefer his collaborative project with Samantha Morton (who is on this album) to EIR — but as a late night “back to mine” record it sets the mood perfectly.

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INDIE BASEMENT CLASSIC: The Chills – Submarine Bells (Slash, 1990)
Martin Phillipps’ finest moment with The Chills is just as rewarding as it was 35 years ago

With the final Chills studio album released this week, it seemed like a good opportunity to look back at the band hitting their zenith. New Zealand cult band The Chills’ first album for a major label is a flat-out triumph even if few in America noticed. Made in London with producer Gary Smith (Blake Babies, Throwing Muses), The Chills came with Phillipps’ best batch of songs to date and a stable, talented lineup of the band. Smith’s production style worked great with The Chills, avoiding au-courant studio techniques, but giving Phillipps’ songs the fidelity they deserved.  “Heavenly Pop Hit” is arguably The Chills’ best-ever song, but there are many other contenders here including “Part Past, Part Fiction,” “The Oncoming Day,” “Tied Up in Chains,” “Effloresce and Deliquesce,” and the gorgeous, gossamer lullabye of a title track. A #1 album in New Zealand, Submarine Bells has shimmer and bite, hooks and oddball charm, and still sounds great today.

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Classic Goth’s 13 Greatest Albums

Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry – Talk About the Weather

Like Sisters of Mercy, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry hailed from Leeds, England and, early on, cribbed from Joy Division, with singer/guitarist Chris Reed sounding eerily like Ian Curtis at times -- though more often there was more ferocity than fragility in his growl. (Their records may beg otherwise but, for what it's worth, the band say their primary influence was MC5.) By the time of their 1985 debut album, Talk About the Weather, the Lorries had figured out their own variant within the genre and had become good songwriters, too. A lot of RLYL's best-ever songs are here, including the anthemic, Wire-eque "Hand on Heart" and the driving, danceable single "Hollow Eyes." With a mix of rhythm boxes and live drums, the scrappy mid-'80s indie production on Talk About the Weather has held up remarkably well, with songs like the punky, rigid "Happy," and the strutting title track which sounds rough, tough and dour, without ever laying it on too thick.

The Chameleons – The Script of the Bridge

While generally not lumped in with the early-'80s goth scene -- like Killing Joke they leaned more "post-punk" -- Manchester's The Chameleons have all the earmarks of the sound: Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding's delay-soaked guitars, that could be both driving and dreamy, John Lever's massive drums, and the foreboding bass and melodrama-drenched voice of frontman Mark Burgess. No matter what genre you put them in, their debut album, The Script of the Bridge, is fantastic. The Chameleons didn't sing about vampires, but Burgess painted a paranoid world where the walls were constantly closing in and "I must've died a thousand times, feeling less than human in God's eyes." Burgess' empathy, and Smithies and Fielding's inventive, interwoven guitar playing, make Script of the Bridge a marvel still today.

Off the Bone

Many groups projected a dark image, but The Cramps' Lux Interior seemed like the kind of person you would not want to encounter in a dark alley, and his band's music -- bare bones rockabilly -- was a party that always seemed seconds away from turning into a fight with broken liquor bottles, or perhaps the undead. It was mostly in good, campy fun, though, with Lux, guitarist Poison Ivy and the rest of the band (that included Kid "Congo" Powers for many years) spinning tales of the radioactive wasteland of the '50s nuclear family, fueled by late night TV and b-grade monster movies. Off the Bone, a UK compilation of the band's best stuff to date that was released while they were still in their early prime, has pretty much everything you need by The Cramps, including early classic "Human Fly," the lusty horror of "Goo Goo Muck," covers of "Fever" and "Surfin Bird," and hedonist anthem "New Kind of Kick." Bonus points: Off The Bone's amazing movie-poster-style cover art illustration is done in old-school 3-D, and original copies came with those red and green glasses needed to make it come alive.

Virgin Prunes – If I Die, I Die

Featuring not one, not two, but three very eccentric, flamboyant frontmen with voices to match -- not to mention The Edge's brother, Dik, on guitar -- Dublin's Virgin Prunes were genuine weirdos whose music was hard to pigeonhole but dipped often enough into the macabre to fit right in at the Batcave alongside Specimen and Sex Gang Children. Gavin Friday and Guggi were the main vocalists, sounding a bit like a new wave Smeagol and Gollum, with Dave-iD Busaras rounding out the trio of voices. (As teenagers, Friday and Guggi co founded an arty gang in Dublin called the Lypton Village with Bono; all members, like Dave-iD, were given new names that reflected their "true character.") Live shows were theatrical and confrontational -- to the point of getting them banned from a few clubs -- and the Prunes were known for high-concept releases like their "A New Form of Beauty" series which laid out their M.O. that being different was beautiful. In that respect Virgin Prunes were very beautiful indeed, as is their 1982 debut which was produced by Wire's Colin Newman. Ranging from mascara-smeared mutant disco ("Baby Turns Blue," "Pagan Lovesong"), to pretty pop ("Ballad of the Man") and creepy mood pieces ("Decline and Fall," "Theme for a Thought"), If I Die, I Die is a terrific, one-of a kind record for those willing to take the leap.

Dead Can Dance – Spleen and Ideal

While Dead Can Dance's music has become known for its sweeping, globe-trotting influences, the band began life in Australia as a more standard fare goth group, albeit one with two powerful singers: Lisa Gerrard, capable of vocal acrobatics and glossolalia (4AD's Ivo Watts-Russell said she used her voice "like a weapon"); and Brendan Perry whose melodramatic baritone could give Scott Walker a run for his money. It's what makes their 1984 self-titled debut gripping, even as they were still finding their sound (and dealing with hastily recorded, tinny production). It's their next album, though, where Dead Can Dance blossom into the group we know today, one who sounds like it belongs in a 300-year-old cathedral and not a grimy rock club. In fact, Spleen & Ideal's opening three tracks sound like church (a very ancient, ornate one), but from there the album opens up wide, incorporating '60s and '70s soundtrack music, grandiose strings (that furthered comparisons to Walker), and baroque arrangements and influences from around the world. You can still hear their post-punk origins in songs like "Advent" and "Avatar," but Dead Can Dance were now writing the kind of grandiose compositions other groups used as walk-on music.

This Mortal Coil – It’ll End in Tears

This Mortal Coil was the passion project of Ivo Watts-Russell, the founder of 4AD Records, where, with help from studio wiz John Fryer, he could take some of his favorite songs and turn them into spare, lush midnight music. Ivo couldn't play an instrument, but he knew what he wanted things to sound like. “It worked between us because we were both depressed motherfuckers at the time," said Fryer in 4AD biography Facing the Other Way. "He trusted me in the studio." TMC's first single remains their defining moment, an unforgettable cover of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" featuring Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie. To follow it up, Ivo called on most of his label's roster, including members of Dead Can Dance, The Wolfgang Press, Xmal Deutschland, and more. The result was It'll End in Tears, which blends Ivo's ear for covers with evocative nighttime instrumentals. "Song to the Siren" is here and Fraser also sings lead on a string quartet version of Roy Harper's "Another Day." There's also two knockout Big Star covers: " Kangaroo," featuring Magazine's Howard Devoto (and an incredible arrangement by Cocteau Twins' Simon Raymonde), and "Holocaust" sung by Cindytalk's Gordon Sharp. The album also features 4AD's other most famous voice, Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard, who sings on three songs. A rocking cover of Colin Newman's "Not Me" breaks the mood a little, but It'll End in Tears is still prime comedown music for those who like it dark.

Cocteau Twins – Treasure

When Cocteau Twins released their 1982 debut album, Garlands, there were flashes of the ethereal band they would become, but at that point they were basically better-than-most Banshees clones with a talented guitarist and promising lead singer. They improved by leaps and bounds on 1983's Head Over Heels, with Elizabeth Fraser flexing her vocal muscles and Robin Guthrie spinning delicate webs of guitar on "Sugar Hiccup." But it was Treasure, their first album as a trio with multi instrumentalist Simon Raymonde, where Cocteau Twins became the otherworldly group fans obsess over still. A truly gorgeous album, Treasure sounded like nothing else at the time, with Fraser's multi-octave range spiraling skyward, intertwined with Guthrie's celestial fretwork. Brian Eno was actually approached to produce but -- according to 4AD's Ivo Watts-Russell -- told the band, "I’m really flattered that you’ve asked, but I’d never have had the courage to use the size of reverb that you used on Head Over Heels!” and suggested they do it themselves. Which they did with fantastic results. Though their sound had mutated, Cocteau Twins were also still very, very goth, from the mix of synthy chimes and swirling acoustics of "Ivo" to the ornate melodrama of "Beatrix," the crashing, thunderous drum machines and jagged guitar and slithering bass of "Persephone" and "Cicely," and the choral ice palace of "Donimo." You also cannot discount the visual aspect of the Cocteaus, from Vaughn Oliver's iconic Treasure artwork (which adorned the walls of many a teenage goth's bedroom in the '80s), to their coifs that were as meticulously crafted as their music. Treasure is as much a world of lace and candles as Stevie Nicks was inhabiting at the time, just not one where Tom Petty might show up.

Bauhaus – Mask

In many ways, it's hard to get much more goth than Bauhaus, a four-piece from Northampton, UK whose introduction to the world was a 10-minute creep-out named after the actor who played Dracula that featured skeleton-like frontman Peter Murphy bellowing "I'm dead! I'm dead! I'm dead! I'm dead!" Bauhaus were a very talented band that pulled from a variety of sources, from glam (they all loved Bowie) to dub reggae, disco, and the many groups who'd just sprung up in the nascent post-punk scene. Though people at the time mostly focused on Murphy's "dark lord" presence, Bauhaus also featured the songwriting talents of bassist David J and guitarist/saxophonist Daniel Ash, while David's brother, Kevin Haskins, was a subtle beast behind the drumkit. Having left 4AD after their striking 1980 debut, In the Flat Field, Bauhaus released their second album, Mask, in 1981 via Beggars Banquet. While it may not contain anything as iconic as "Bela Lugosi's Dead" or "Dark Entries," Mask is an improvement over In the Flat Field across-the-board, with better songs, better production and arrangements, and more varied material. The album rips open with the pounding, urgent "Hair of the Dog" and songs like the breathless "Passion of Lovers," funky "Kick in the Eye" and skronky disco number "In Fear of Fear" are classics, as are the ferocious "Dancing" and "The Man with X-Ray Eyes." Mask's greatest quality may be that, as heavy as it can be, it's also fun, with welcome flashes of wry humor (mostly from David J) -- a quality that most of their dead-serious contemporaries lacked.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Tender Prey

"Unfortunately all the worst sides of my output in my creative life seem to have been adopted by people as the most influential ones," Nick Cave told NME writer Jack Barron back in 1988, shortly before the release of Tender Prey, speaking of his influence on the goth rock scene. "I'd hate to go down in history as the No 1 goth, the man who spawned a thousand goth bands with stacked hairstyles, no personality, pale sick people." As far as pale sick people went, Cave's late-'70s/early-'80s band The Birthday Party were arguably the sickest of them all (and plenty pale even without corpse paint), bringing a genuine intensity -- and palpable threat of violence -- to their live shows and, to a lesser extent, their records. Going solo with the Bad Seeds, Cave dialed back the fury and noise, opting instead for a more suave and sophisticated musical approach while still exploring his favorite themes -- love, sex, death, religion -- with the fire and brimstone fervor of a man on the brink. With a Murderers' Row lineup of the Bad Seeds, including Kid "Congo" Powers, Einstersturzende Neubauten's Blixa Bargeld, Mick Harvey, Roland Wolf, and Thomas Wylder, Cave delivered his greatest record to date. Tender Prey opens with "The Mercy Seat," which remains one of The Bad Seeds' signature songs, sung from the point of view of a man awaiting execution on the electric chair, and is as riveting as it gets. And the album keeps delivering, be it groovy garage rock rock ("Oh Deanna"), lush '60s orch pop ("Slowly Goes the Night"), or spaghetti western ballads ("Mercy"). Death was at the heart of nearly every song, and with Cave's distinctive baritone wail, Tender Prey is as gothic as it gets, even if in his case, the bats had long left the belfry.

The Cure – Faith

Picking one album by The Cure for this list is difficult, as there are at least three from the '80s that are contenders. If you want them wallowing in despair, it's Pornography. If you still want them wallowing but with lots of hits, it's Disintegration. But 1981's Faith is where Robert Smith fully embraced the moping as a stylistic choice, while still retaining a little spring in his step -- and the more minimal sound -- that they sported on their first two albums. Things might've turned out differently, though. "The initial demos that we did in my mom and dad’s dining room are really quite upbeat," Robert Smith told Rolling Stone. But then, the whole band had a close death in the family. "Within about two weeks, the whole mood of the band had completely changed. I wrote 'The Funeral Party' and 'All Cats Are Grey” in one night, and that really set the tone for the album." Memorable, drowned basslines lead more songs than not (see "Other Voices," "Holy Hour," the title track) and work in tandem with tom-heavy drum patterns. Guitars spin delicate threadwork, glacial synthesizers spread permafrost, and brittle echo covers everything. Despite a couple relatively upbeat tracks, Robert Smith seems resigned to his mood, as is evident just from song titles like "The Funeral Party," "The Drowning Man" and, what's one of the best, most Cure-like titles ever, "All Cats Are Grey." Faith is a mood, but Smith and company haven't completely shut all the curtains just yet.

Joy Division – Closer

So much of what we know as classic "goth" was born out of Joy Division's sound that it's both difficult to overestimate the band's significance and, for some, to understand their significance, as Ian Curtis' tortured vocals, Peter Hook's basslines, Stephen Morris' tom-heavy drumming and Bernard Sumner's wiry guitars have been imitated endlessly since. (See nearly every band on this list in some way or another.) But where some of the other artists to follow in their footsteps appropriated their style because they liked the way it sounded and looked, Joy Division were the real deal. Closer was the group's defining, final statement, released two months after the suicide of Curtis. (The cover art, featuring a tombstone from an Italian cemetery, was in production before his death.) "This is the way, step inside," our guide Curtis sings on the album's opening song, "Atrocity Exhibition," letting us into a dark world that is all rolling drums, moody bass, and guitars that sound nearly as industrial as the factory machines producer Martin Hannett mixed in. That tone stayed throughout the album: "Isolation," with its icy synthesizers and rapid-fire bass; the metallic, heavy "Colony"; the death disco of "A Means to An End"; the sleek, sexy "Heart and Soul"; and the somber closing tracks "The Eternal" and "Decades." The mood is bleak and unrelenting, though Martin Hannett may have hit on the best description, at least for this list's purposes: "dancing music with Gothic overtones."

Siouxsie & the Banshees – Juju

Siouxsie & The Banshees' 1980 album, Kaleidoscope, was their first to feature both drummer Budgie and former Magazine guitarist John McGeoch, but it was their next album that took full advantage of the new lineup's alchemy. Spinning off the highs of Kaleidoscope singles "Happy House" and "Christine" (and 1980 standalone single "Israel"), the Banshees pushed the highs even higher for what is their best album, mixing dark, mysterious world influences into their signature sound that has proved highly influential on countless bands, whether the Banshees liked it or not. McGeoch, whose inventive playing is across-the-board fantastic here, was quoted in the liner notes for the 2006 reissue of Juju that it was “simply not true” that the Banshees were goth. “It simplifies things too much to give it a label like that. We were more thriller than horror movie, more Hitchcockian blood-dripping-on-a-daisy than putting fangs in something.” The band protest too much, especially on a record involving voodoo, witches and a song titled "Halloween," not to mention the general creepy atmosphere of inky classics like "Spellbound," "Arabian Nights," "Night Shift," and Siouxsie's next-level vocal performance on "Head Cut." But like most great albums, Juju transcends genre, even if its sound was mimicked by dozens of inferior bands.

The Sisters of Mercy – Floodland

If Joy Division unwittingly helped create goth, and the closing of Batcave signaled the end, then Sisters of Mercy welded the lid shut with the over-the-top late-'80s widescreen glory that is 1987's Floodland. When members Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams left the group to form The Mission (UK), Andrew Eldritch and erstwhile drum machine Doktor Avalanche initially renamed themselves Sisterhood but soon refashioned Sisters of Mercy with former Bags/Gun Club bassist Patricia Morrison to make their defining statement. (Morrison, who would later join The Damned, doesn't actually play on the album, but her face looks out across the water on the album cover, and her style added much to the videos from this record.) At the center of the album is the truly epic "This Corrosion" which was produced by Jim Steinman -- who wrote and produced Meatloaf's Bat Out of Hell albums (and "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and more) -- which is so ridiculous (the 40-piece choir) it tips fully into genius. It's not even the best song; that would be "Lucretia My Reflection" with its killer bassline, ferociously whispered vocals and mix of power chords, synths and thundering drums. There's also opener "Dominion" / "Mother Russia," the crawling, synthy "Flood 1," the windswept acoustics of "Flood II," and sullen torch song "1959." In a genre that is rarely subtle, Eldritch swings for the fences and connects right down to the clever/stupid line for a home run. Turn it up loud, let the Floodland wash over you and sing "This Corrosion" with him.