jonathan

Ivo Watts-Russell assembled a shifting cast of 4AD artists and transformed his favorite songs into something hauntingly beautiful and entirely his own. It’ll End in Tears never feels like a covers album or compilation—it feels like the work of one extraordinary, fully formed band.

I didn’t discover Pink Floyd when I was supposed to in high school—it took me another 20 years. But Wish You Were Here was worth the wait: haunting, immersive and, for me, worlds better than The Dark Side of the Moon.

Since completes what feels like an incomparable trilogy. Buckner’s voice is now fully formed—clear, singular and unmistakable—and the album creates a mood so complete you can live inside it. Those first three records felt like my own secret gift.

On Devotion + Doubt, Buckner fully came into his voice—more confident, more distinctive and unmistakably himself. It retains some of the trappings of alt-country but completely transcends them. A gorgeous, nearly perfect album.

When Bloomed appeared, it felt like the album I’d been waiting for all my life. The country music is loose and unforced, but the storytelling and emotion are almost unbearably intense. It changed my life—and made Richard Buckner one of my essential artists.

Some dismiss Movement as a confused transition between Joy Division and New Order. That’s precisely what makes it so beautiful: an album of grief and indecision, a band exorcising what it was while struggling to discover what it might become. It isn’t perfect—and that’s what makes it perfect. My favorite Joy Division album and my favorite New Order album.

So much fun—danceable and political without ever becoming preachy. I can’t separate the album from seeing them at that moment: they were simply insane. For a ska revival record rooted so deeply in the past, it still sounds astonishingly fresh.

The Stones at their most deranged, drugged, deviant and dangerous. Exile on Main St. is rock ’n’ roll defined: beautiful and filthy, careless and brilliant—and the template for countless bands that followed.

Hipsters will dismiss Darklands as inferior to Psychocandy, but it’s the absolute gem of the Jesus and Mary Chain catalogue: brilliant, beautiful and not a single skip.

Preacher’s Daughter is more than an album—it’s an entire Southern Gothic universe of murder ballads, doomed faith and buried desire, unfolding like a dark family secret behind a veil of heat and dread.

Along with Brotherhood, Low-Life was New Order’s pinnacle—discounting Movement, which remains my favorite album in the entire New Order/Joy Division continuum.

This is simply a perfect album. Anyone who dismisses Lana Del Rey as merely a pop artist has no idea how complex, sophisticated and emotionally layered her music is.

Just how experimental it was—not merely for a punk band, but for any band. London Calling captures a moment and a group of artists who were wildly diverse yet completely cohesive.

Wait—this is an album, not just a T-shirt? 😂One of the defining records of its era: stark, haunting and still utterly singular.

Heavy metal isn’t one of my favorite genres, and yet I love Paranoid—dark, heavy, surprisingly agile and almost impossibly influential.

It’s one of the most popular albums I’ll admit to loving, but Rumours defines its time—and for “The Chain” alone, it’s a masterpiece.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is Kanye at his most brilliant and monstrous—an operatic masterpiece of ego, excess and self-destruction.

Sticky Fingers is the Stones at their most decadent and damaged: swaggering, soulful, sleazy—and somehow still beautiful.