We’ve hit mid-November which means new releases have finally slowed down a little but I’ve still got six for you this week in Indie Basement: The John Hughes Mixtapes is ’80s teen film gold, Love & Rockets launch a vinyl reissue campaign, plus new albums by Breanna Barbara, Jeb Loy Nichols, veteran electronic duo Plaid, Blinker the Star, and more.

If you need more of the week’s new stuff, Andrew reviews L.S. Dunes, Smidley, Christine and the Queens and more in Notable Releases. For more Basement-related: GOAT Don Letts just announced his debut solo album which features Terry Hall, Wayne Coyne, and Hollie Cook; there are also new albums on the way from The Raincoats’ Gina Birch, Beta Band’s Steve Mason, and Fever Ray; Robyn Hitchcock will be touring with Kelley Stoltz; The Sisters of Mercy are finally coming back to the US; and The Flaming Lips’ Space Bubble Concert Film is on the Criterion Channel.

Also: read my recaps from Iceland Airwaves.

A reminder that there’s an Indie Basement section of the BV shop whose virtual shelves are stocked high with vinyl and merch from Love & Rockets, Mogwai, The Flaming Lips, King Gizzard, Pavement, Wet Leg, Mo Troper, Arctic Monkeys, Beach House, Broadcast, Stereolab, Belle & Sebastian, Talking Heads, Spoon, Lilys, Cocteau Twins, Can, Dinosaur Jr and more.

Various Artists – Life Moves Pretty Fast: The John Hughes Mixtapes (Demon)
John Hughes fans finally get the soundtracks they deserve — mostly — with this collection that mixes hits with long-sought-after rarities

“As always, we went for passion over popularity.” That’s John Hughes in the press release for the Some Kind of Wonderful soundtrack, but it sums up the approach he brought to choosing the music for his films which are some of the most beloved of the ’80s. Unfortunately the actual soundtrack albums for Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles and others didn’t always have the best songs that were in the films. This compilation — available in a variety of editions, big and bigger — does a good job of correcting that, and is a real white whale release for John Hughes fans. I wrote this up back when it was announced and here’s part of it:

Life Moves Pretty Fast does not have everything. There are tracks omitted probably for budget reasons — The Beatles “Twist & Shout” from Ferris Beuller, The Smiths’ “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” from Pretty in Pink, not to mention Psychedelic Furs’ title track) but none of those are particularly hard to find. What it does have are most of those lost treasures, especially from Ferris Bueller: The Flowerpot Men’s “Beat City” (which was only released as a John Hughes Fan Club 7″ and has been repressed for the super deluxe edition of this box), The Dream Academy’s majestic instrumental cover of “Please Please Please,” and The English Beat’s “March of the Swivelheads” that soundtracks Ferris’ mad dash home across neighborhood backyards.

There’s also Propaganda’s incredible “Abuse [Here]” which is the most memorable piece of music in Some Kind of Wonderful (sorry, Flesh for Lulu); The Revillos’ B-52’s-esque “Rev Up” and The Specials’ “Little Bitch” from Sixteen Candles; and The Rave-Ups’ “Positively Lost Me” which they perform live in Pretty in Pink but were not allowed to be on the soundtrack because A&M wanted songs written just for the film. They even included Pop Will Eat Itself’s grebo-hip-hop cover of ’60s garage rock obscurity “Beaver Patrol” from The Great Outdoors.

Read the whole review here, and and read about some of the comp’s biggest inclusions and omissions here.

Pick up Life Moves Pretty Fast: The John Hughes Mixtapes as a double LP vinyl set or as a 4-CD/cassette/7″ box set in the BV shop. The comp isn’t available to stream but someone did make a playlist with as many songs as they could find:

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Breanna Barbara – Nothin’ But Time (Fuzz Club)
Garage rock artist and occasional Tricky muse returns after six years with her second album

Garage-psych is a genre more known for wild stage antics than wild innovations, but Breanna Barbera has always stood out thanks to good songwriting and her versatile, expressive voice. It’s been six years since she released her debut album, Mirage Dreams, and since then the psych-garage singer’s career has taken some unusual turns. Most surprising: being recruited by Tricky to be his main touring vocalist in 2017 that has kept them collaborating since, including last year’s Lonely Guest album. For her sophomore album, Breanna hasn’t undergone a radical trip hop reinvention — though there is a bit of a revival at the moment — and works once again with producer/collaborator Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Hurray for the Riff Raff) who makes the songs and her voice shine. There are a number of “hey what is this?” moments on Nothin’ But Time, most of which are of the spectral variety, including the album’s belter of a finish, “Weaning,” and cinematic showstoppers “Me Too” and “Exist.” But the knockout is “Old Soul,” four minutes of smouldering heartbreak with a devastating vocal performance that goes from vulnerably brittle to soul-mining wail.

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Jeb Loy Nichols – The United States Of The Broken Hearted (On-U Sound)
Dub producer Adrian Sherwood and Primal Scream’s Martin Duffy contribute to Jeb Loy Nichols’ warm, inviting album

Singer-songwriter Jeb Loy Nichols was born in Wyoming but moved to London in the ’80s; at one point he ended up living in a squat with The Slits’ Ari Up and had his horizons broadened by reggae and post-punk. In the ’90s he led Fellow Travelers with his wife Lorraine Morley before going solo, and these days his style mixes folk, reggae, country, soul, electronic music and just about any other genre he can fit under his hat. The United States Of The Broken Hearted was produced by old friend, On-U Sound founder and dub/post-punk producer Adrian Sherwood, who produced Jeb’s 2010 album Long Time Traveller, and it features contributions from Martin Duffy (Primal Scream / Felt), great reggae drummer Horseman, Ivan “Celloman” Hussey (Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra), and more. This is not a reggae album, though, but Sherwood brings dub’s sense of space to these songs which are closer to John Prine than John Holt. It’s a warm and inviting space for Nichols’ world-weary, autumnal voice and songs with lyrics like “I’ve enjoyed as much of this good life as I can take.” Jeb is down, but he is not out.

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Plaid – Feorm Falorx (Warp)
Long-running Warp electronic duo still sound like a safe, friendly future on their 10th album

2022 is not a bad time to be a veteran electronic duo. Royksopp have released three albums this year (all pretty good), Orbital seem to be in a creative rebirth, and Chemical Brothers are still going strong. Now here’s Plaid, aka Andy Turner and Ed Handley, who were making intelligent dance music before the term IDM was coined and have kept doing it since it stopped being used, and most of that time they’ve been doing it for Warp Records. Feorm Falorx is Plaid’s 10th album and, according to the label, “finds the duo recreating a recent performance at the Feorm Festival on the planet Falorx. In order to survive the Falorxian atmosphere, the duo were converted into light to travel and perform.” I’m not sure what that means, put it probably has something to do with the very cool artwork and videos for the album that were created with the help of AI software. Otherwise, this is not demonstratively different than what Plaid were doing on their first album for Warp, 1997’s Not For Threes, still making what I call cocktail party techno that holds your attention but doesn’t make the crowd want to break stuff. There are side trips to the beach and sleek Blade Runner cityscapes, not to mention a couple tracks that enter Neu! territory, but it all stays within Plaid’s jurisdiction and has them in fine feorm.

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Love & Rockets – Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven & Express vinyl reissues (Beggars Arkive)
The first in a series of vinyl reissues

Named after the Hernandez brothers’ underground comic, Love & Rockets reunited three-fourths of Bauhaus: guitarist Daniel Ash and drummer Kevin Haskins, who made records as Tones on Tail, and Kevin’s brother, David J, who had previously gone solo and played in The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy. Free from Murphy’s more overtly arty leanings, Ash, J, and Haskins stretched their wings, incorporating a wide range of style that went far beyond goth even while they still looked the part. They could still be heavy and dark, but Love & Rockets also made pure pop and ethereal psychedelia, and weren’t afraid to smile and have fun. They even managed to score a US hit in 1989 with “So Alive” that was the only pop song on an otherwise abrasive rock album. I love Bauhaus, but when they announced reunion shows in 2019 my main hope was that it would open the door for a Love & Rockets to return as well.

No word on that yet, but fans do have something to look forward to. Beggars Arkive have launched a vinyl reissue campaign that looks to continue through 2023 and begin with their essential first two albums — 1985’s Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven and 1986’s Express — which have been remastered from the original tapes at Abbey Road Studios and will be out January 13.

Seventh Dream of Teenage Heaven really shows off the range of styles the trio were capable of, from Syd Barrett-esque folk, to dubby post-punk, to ’60s inspired psychedelia to synthy new age. Daniel Ash and David J make great dueling frontmen whose voices sound even better together on classics like “Haunted When the Minutes Drag,” “If There’s a Heaven Above,” and “The Dog End of a Day Gone By.” John Rivers’ production is reverby but stays just south of Big ’80s excess. Preorder the vinyl.

Express, which was also produced by Rivers, was a big college radio hit in the US thanks to songs like “All in My Mind” (which gets two different versions on the album), the chugging “Kundalini Express,” the storming “The Yin and Yang of the Flowerpot Man,” the sultry “Life in Laralay,” and “It Could Be Sunshine” which is at turns slinky and slashing. Love & Rockets’ magic formula was to stay just on the cool side of weird and never at the expense of big catchy melodies. It’s one of my favorite albums of the ’80s. Preorder the vinyl.

One word of warning on these reissues: these are the original UK editions, which means Express does not have their great cover of The Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion,” which was their debut single that was tacked onto the end of Side 1 of the American release. Beggars says that the rest of Love & Rockets’ albums will be reissued later in 2023, plus “two more releases.” I’d bet one of them will be a compilation of non-LP material like “Ball of Confusion” and their Bubblemen side project. We’ll see.

There’s also a vinyl box set of remastered editions of all their albums that was limited to 1000 copies and is already sold out (it’s out December 9) but don’t fret, they’ll all be available individually, including expanded editions of their underrated final two albums for Beggars, 1994’s Hot Trip To Heaven and 1996’s Sweet F.A.

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Blinker The Star – Love Oblast (self-released)

Jordon Zadorozny has been making anthemic rock as Blinker the Star for 30 years, getting his start in the Alternative Nation-era early ’90s, and has survived ups, downs, two major labels, working with Courtney Love and Lindsey Buckingham, plus other record biz hurdles. These days, Zadorozny self-releases his Blinker the Star albums but puts just as much care into them (though maybe not as much money) as he did when signed to A&M or Dreamworks. He’s mellowed since the ’90s and Love Oblast finds him in a decidedly introspective mode, and more interested in synths than distortion pedals. The album was made in just a month at his studio which sits on 50 acres of farmland in rural Ontario, and on songs like “Touch” and “8 of Hearts” it sounds like most nights he spent looking up at the stars.

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Looking for more? Browse the Indie Basement archives.

And check out what’s new in our shop.

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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.