Pitchfork: 30 Best Dream Pop Albums
by 
teague 
https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-30-best-dream-pop-albums/
- Chart updated: 09/04/2021 21:15
- (Created: 09/04/2021 21:06).
- Chart size: 30 albums.
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With its dislocating atmospheres and diffident vocals, all dream pop is outsider music. Galaxie 500 sounded so removed from a sense of time or place that they made this fact nonnegotiable. The droning, doleful music of their second album, On Fire, arrived with the quiet subtlety of a profound secret. Over a few chords and understated drumming, Dean Wareham mumbled clever lyrics about his Dodge Dart, the weatherman, and liminal things. Drummer Damon Krukowski and bassist Naomi Yang made their spare neo-psychedelia burst with emotion.
On Fire sounds like the Velvet Underground slowly warming up: In lieu of a Pop Art banana, Wareham sings about waiting in a line eating Twinkies; instead of heroin, he has a song about dropping acid in the woods; instead of Warhol, Galaxie 500 pair with an eccentric, no-frills producer named Kramer. As in all great dream pop, these impressionistic elements congeal into a single atomic sound, as if the instruments have eclipsed one another, moving with the crawl of a cloud. –Jenn Pelly
On Fire sounds like the Velvet Underground slowly warming up: In lieu of a Pop Art banana, Wareham sings about waiting in a line eating Twinkies; instead of heroin, he has a song about dropping acid in the woods; instead of Warhol, Galaxie 500 pair with an eccentric, no-frills producer named Kramer. As in all great dream pop, these impressionistic elements congeal into a single atomic sound, as if the instruments have eclipsed one another, moving with the crawl of a cloud. –Jenn Pelly
Year of Release:
1989
Appears in:
Rank Score:
4,030
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The muse sang in Tim Buckley when he wrote “Song to the Siren,” a lovelorn ’60s ballad for the female monsters whose incantations tempted Homer’s Odysseus. But the track wouldn’t fulfill its mesmerizing potential until 1983, when Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser unfurled her diaphanous voice over its devotional lyrics on a cover by This Mortal Coil. Intended as a B-side, the recording became the 4AD super-collective’s first single, lingering on the UK indie charts for two years.
“Siren” looms so large in the dream pop mythos, it can overshadow not just the debut album it anchors, It’ll End in Tears, but also the entire discography of This Mortal Coil. Conceived and produced by 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell, the band was designed to recontextualize some of his favorite songs and encourage experimentation beyond each contributing artist’s signature sound. Cindytalk frontman Gordon Sharp’s echoing laments transform Big Star’s “Kanga Roo” from lackadaisical to crushing, while piano lends additional solemnity to the same band’s “Holocaust,” as sung by Howard Devoto of Magazine. Paired with atmospheric compositions by Fraser’s Cocteau Twins bandmates, Dead Can Dance vocalist Lisa Gerrard, and more stars, this collection of covers helped set the template for dream pop and catalyzed 4AD’s ascendance from the stilted poetics of goth rock to the kings of gauzy transcendence. –Judy Berman
“Siren” looms so large in the dream pop mythos, it can overshadow not just the debut album it anchors, It’ll End in Tears, but also the entire discography of This Mortal Coil. Conceived and produced by 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell, the band was designed to recontextualize some of his favorite songs and encourage experimentation beyond each contributing artist’s signature sound. Cindytalk frontman Gordon Sharp’s echoing laments transform Big Star’s “Kanga Roo” from lackadaisical to crushing, while piano lends additional solemnity to the same band’s “Holocaust,” as sung by Howard Devoto of Magazine. Paired with atmospheric compositions by Fraser’s Cocteau Twins bandmates, Dead Can Dance vocalist Lisa Gerrard, and more stars, this collection of covers helped set the template for dream pop and catalyzed 4AD’s ascendance from the stilted poetics of goth rock to the kings of gauzy transcendence. –Judy Berman
Year of Release:
1984
Appears in:
Rank Score:
634
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Comments:
10.
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The opening piano clunk of Julee Cruise’s “Falling” are two of television’s most famous notes: Performed by Angelo Badalamenti, they are the basis for the “Twin Peaks” theme. On TV, the song is instrumental (and inferior), a creepy call to arms for weirdos to plop on the couch and cry for Laura Palmer. But Cruise takes the song out of the darkness, as the airiness of her voice transforms the horrid into something beautiful, if still somewhat grotesque. Dream pop is synonymous with fuzz, but Floating Into the Night has more of a lacquer in its blend of Cruise’s sweet and foggy singing, raw saxophone, gentle guitar strokes, and held synthesizer notes. Of course it worked for “Twin Peaks,” a dreamy, scary alternate reality; “I Float Alone”—written, like all of the album, alongside David Lynch—epitomizes that. It’s a lounge number that, in other hands, might have never left the hotel bar. Is “floating through this darkness all alone” about a breakup or about the fallout of a murder? Is Cruise an angel sent from heaven to bless us with her pure whisper, or is she the devil in disguise? Is “both” an option? –Matthew Schnipper
Year of Release:
1989
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,543
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Inspired by the Velvet Underground, Joy Division, Jonathan Richman, and New Zealand’s Flying Nun label, Galaxie 500 stood out in the rollicking Boston underground thanks to their introspective minimalism. The 10 tracks on their 1988 debut, Today, are sprawling washes of sound that manage to capture an ineffable sensation: a nostalgia both known and unknown, intensely familiar yet completely mystical. But any shot at shoegazing here is thwarted by a subtle restraint. No matter how high Damon Krukowski’s primal, jazz-inspired drums, Dean Wareham’s psychedelic guitar ramblings, and Naomi Yang’s robust basslines soar, their playing always returns to Earth. Their heads, however, stay in the clouds on songs like “Flowers” and “Oblivious,” in which the trio ponder the trappings of romance. And then of course there’s the fuzzy and careening “Tugboat,” in which Wareham declares his humble resolution to buoy his love through whatever choppy waters they face. –Quinn Moreland
Year of Release:
1988
Appears in:
Rank Score:
919
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The brilliance of Cocteau Twins is that they capture the lightness of dreams. Their pop sound is like they’ve dipped into your reveries and are playing them back to you. By the time Blue Bell Knoll, the Scottish band’s fifth album, came out in 1988, they had cemented this meld of glittery guitars and avian vocals, this talent for finding pure white in the black abyss of goth. This album, however, was their first significant U.S. release, introduced with their bewildering single “Carolyn’s Fingers.” On it, Elizabeth Fraser’s words are impossible to understand: Either they’re being spoken in another tongue, or you’ve temporarily developed aphasia and can’t compute them. Throughout the record, the trio strip back to their basic groundwork of bass-guitar melodies, a pattern they’d continue on Heaven or Las Vegas two years later. Blue Bell Knoll is not as dynamic a listen as that masterpiece, but its exploration of widescreen space is essential, and set down the canvas for glorious colors to come. –Eve Barlow
Year of Release:
1988
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,015
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Total albums: 5. Page 1 of 1
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Pitchfork: 30 Best Dream Pop Albums composition
| Decade | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1930s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1940s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1950s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1960s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1970s | 0 | 0% | |
| 1980s | 5 | 17% | |
| 1990s | 8 | 27% | |
| 2000s | 10 | 33% | |
| 2010s | 7 | 23% | |
| 2020s | 0 | 0% |
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|||
| Grouper | 2 | 7% | |
| Cocteau Twins | 2 | 7% | |
| Mazzy Star | 2 | 7% | |
| Low | 2 | 7% | |
| Beach House | 2 | 7% | |
| Galaxie 500 | 2 | 7% | |
| The Clientele | 1 | 3% | |
| Show all | |||
Pitchfork: 30 Best Dream Pop Albums similar charts
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Other custom charts by teague
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Pitchfork: 30 Best Dream Pop Albums ratings
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| Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ! | 06/04/2025 15:58 | Johnnyo | 2,567 | 80/100 |
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