The Ides of March is upon us — Ceasar, watch your back — and we’ve got a nice crop of records this week to dig into: Four Tet does what he does best on his 12th album (confusingly titled Three); Air offer up a 25th anniversary edition of their classic debut album; Pete Astor (The Loft / The Weather Prophets) revisits deep cuts from his 40 year career; The Dandy Warhols deliver one of their hookiest and most absurd records in recent memory; and Montreal prog band Yoo Do Right are back with a new EP.

Over in Notable Releases, Andrew reviews the latest from Kacey Musgraves, Tierra Whack, Sweet Pill and more.

This week is South by Southwest which usually means not as much news, but among the headlines were: new album announcements from Annie-Claude Deschênes (Duchess Says) The KVB, and former Bad Seed bassist Barry Adamson, plus a Pavement 7″ singles box set and 10cc announced their first North American tour in 35 years.

And while I’m not in Austin this week, I did spend a lot of last weekend at NYC’s New Colossus Fest and I recapped my five favorite sets.

RIP Karl Wallinger and Eric Carmen.

Head below for this week’s reviews…

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ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Four Tet – Three (Text Records)
Album #12 from Kieran Hebden’s downtempo alter ego finds him still a master of his craft 

Kieran Hebden has been doing it so long and so well as Four Tet, having carved out a distinctive sound from the jump, that it’s easy to take him for granted. But what makes Four Tet records so consistently great is that whatever he does, whether it’s albums on his own or collaborations with Thom Yorke or Skrillex, everything seems to stem from personal curiosity. He makes music for himself and remains at the top of his game on Three, his 12th Four Tet album and first in four years. Hebden is still working with the same threads he always has — downtempo beats, jazz, folk, shoegaze, techno, house, dub — but the tapestries he weaves are always unique, beautiful and distinctly his own creations.

Three is a smorgasbord of what Four Tet does best, from downtempo mood pieces (“Loved,” “Storm Crystals”), to ethereal dance tracks (the techno-tinged, harp-laden “Daydream Repeat” and skipping “31 Bloom”), dalliances with dreampop (“Skater” owes a little to Cocteau Twins and The Durutti Column), and pure shimmering atmosphere (“Gliding Through Everything”). The album closes with “Three Drums,” Four Tet’s masterful single from last year that here ties the whole record together. Powered by a loping, 96 bpm beat, it’s an end-of-the-night send-off, eight minutes of bliss where majestic, airy synths crest, washing away the drums entirely, leaving a slow fade of warm ambience as the day breaks and you head home.

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Air – Moon Safari 25th Anniversary Edition (Rhino)
French duo’s timeless debut album, now with remixes and a Dolby Atmos mix

In the United States, Air were lumped with the short-lived mid-’90s lounge revival, but Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel had a lot more in common with trip-hop and the downtempo scene that was still to come, and their luxurious mix of prog, exotica, dub and vocoder use made for perfect back-to-mine comedown music for ravers. Air have always functioned outside space and time, and their debut album, Moon Safari, holds up remarkably well, moving past kitsch into its own perfect world of sound. You’re hooked from the opening bassline of “La Femme D’Argent” through its two sultry collaborations with singer Beth Hirsch (“All I Need” and “You Make it Easy”), singles “Sexy Boy” and Kelly Watch the Stars,” and the analogue synth extravaganza closer, “Le voyage de Pénélope.” Moon Safari sounded like a million bucks then and its value has only appreciated.

While I am a vinyl collector and own Moon Safari on LP, dare I say it some records are made for CD and this is one of them. It’s an album you just want to put on, let wash over you and not have to worry about having to get up to flip over. This 25th anniversary set is CD-only and still worth picking up. Actually it’s more than a CD, as the most exciting feature of this new double-CD 25th anniversary edition is the Blu-ray which contains a new Dolby Atmos mix of the album. For a band whose music seems made for planetariums, now we’ve got a mix that totally envelops you, including above you. “Kelly Watch the Stars” will be in the stars, and the dubby effects and swirling strings of opening cut “La Femme D’Argent” just cry out for spatial audio.

The Blu-ray also includes Mike Mills’ excellent 1999 documentary Eating, Sleeping, Waiting & Playing, which follows Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel as they play their first shows in London, Paris and New York City, as well as the Mills-directed videos for the album’s three singles: “Sexy Boy,” which brings Moon Safari’s graphic designs to life; “Kelly Watch the Stars,” which depicts a brutal game of Atari Pong; and “All I Need,” where the song is more a soundtrack to a short verite documentary spending time with a young, very in-love skater couple; as well as “Le Soleil Est Prés De Moi” from the Premiers Symptomes EP. There’s also the bonus CD of Moon Safari Rarities that contains two tracks that are worth the price of admission: David Whitaker’s remix of “Remember” that adds Bond Theme style strings (there’s an Atmos mix of this too), and The Moog Cookbook’s amazing, funky remix of “Kelly Watch the Stars” that sounds like a lost Incredible Bongo Band track. With Air touring Moon Safari this year, it’s a perfect time to fall all over again for this still incredible — and incredible-sounding — record.

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Pete Astor – Tall Stories & New Religion (Tapete)
The former Loft and Weather Prophets frontman rescues deep cuts from his past and reworks them for a wonderful new album

Twenty Twenty-Four marks the 40th anniversary of Pete Astor’s musical career, which started with early Creation Records bands The Loft and The Weather Prophets, and later The Wisdom of Harry (who were signed to Matador) and a long and rewarding solo career. To mark the occasion, he’s gone back through his discography to re-record and rework a few songs. To help him do it, he’s got an amazing band: drummer Ian Button (Death in Vegas, Go Kart Mozart), bassist Andy Lewis (Paul Weller), guitarist Wilson Neil Scott (Felt, Everything But the Girl) and keyboardist Sean Read (Beth Orton, Iggy Pop, Edwyn Collins, etc).

Where most artists would pick their most well-known material, Astor eschews singles like The Loft’s “Up and Down the Slope” and The Weather Prophets’ “Why Does the Rain” in favor of songs that meant more to him and that he felt would benefit from dusting off and getting a new coat of paint. “Throughout this record I was able to revisit the songs,” Astor says in the album’s detailed, thoughtful liner notes, “which allowed me to sit inside what I’d written in a way that I felt I was able to balance the way that they still made sense to me now, looking to the future and that big, new country, the past.” Astor’s voice has aged like a fine wine, and I don’t think he’s ever made a better-sounding album; rich and warm with inspired production touches like the arpeggiated synths and spaghetti western guitars on one-chord-wonder “Chinese Cadillac” that was originally a Weather Prophets b-side, and the sun-dappled folk of “The Emperor, The Dealer and The Birthday Boy” (originally on his 1991 solo album, Zoo). He’s managed to flip a few of his own forgotten properties into something truly special. Sometimes, the best cuts are the deepest.

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The Dandy Warhols – ROCKMAKER (Sunset Blvd)
The Dandy Warhols haven’t sounded this much fun, or absurd, in a while…with help from Frank Black, Debbie Harry, James Mercer and…Slash?

Portland, OR’s The Dandy Warhols spent their first decade going for it, crafting psych-rock pop earworms flecked with big riffs, big hooks, and lots of attitude (and arrogance). This peaked with 2003’s Welcome to the Monkey House which was full of memorable, radio-friendly songs, one of which ended up as the theme song to Veronica Mars. After that, documentary DiG! (which followed them and frenemies The Brian Jonestown Massacre for eight years) was released and became an instant cult classic, and the band built their own studio/playhouse, The Odditorium, which where they could make music at their own pace and get as weird as they wanted. The Odditorium was no doubt good for their collective band psyche but with no one telling them “no,” albums over the last 20 years have often been shaggy dogs that could use a little grooming.

ROCKMAKER is the Dandys’ 12th album, more focused than they’ve been in a while, and pretty fun if exceedingly silly at times. To the latter, see “Danzig With Myself” which features Black Francis on guitar though you’d never know it if you didn’t read it in the credits. (He makes his presence for felt later in the record on synth-punk ripper “Love Thyself.”) The album is full of guests, actually. Debbie Harry shows up on spacey closer “I Will Never Stop Loving You,” and future trivia question answer “I’d Like to Help You With Your Problem” features The Shins’ James Mercer on backing vocals AND a very Slash-style guitar solo by the actual Slash. ROCKMAKER has a dark current running through it and between the sleazy blues riffs and synthetic drums and other electronics, it is weirdly reminiscent of ’90s industrial rockers My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult. The album is also at its best when it’s at its most absurd: “Alcohol And Cocainemarijuananicotine” is exceedingly, knowingly dumb, in the tradition of “Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth” and, with a giddy spirit and irresistible falsetto chorus, is the album’s high point. Pun intended, which might have made a better title for this record.

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Yoo Doo Right – The Sacred Fuck EP (Mothland)
Montreal krautrock/prog-lovers drop a terrifically cinematic new single

This new EP from Montreal’s krautrock-loving/referencing Yoo Doo Right is more like an awesome eight-minute single preceded by 15 minutes of noise, field recordings and Lynchian weirdness. The four-part collage includes flashes of eerie cabaret, Montreal street violinist Mark Landry, and a Gregorian-style vocal chorus. “A lot of these scenes, narratives, ideas and emotions come from trying to place sonic images in a cinematic way to coincide with a lot of the hurt and confusion we had experienced and are continuing to experience these past few years,” says the band’s Justin Cober. It all leads up to “FULL HEALTH (BBB),” that builds slowly, methodically over two and a half minutes till it hits a full head of steam, overflowing with thundering drums, careening, orchestral guitars, and general four horsemen of the apocalypse vibes before riding off into the fiercest of sunsets. Hopefully this is a taste of more to come soon.

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Classic Goth’s 13 Greatest Albums

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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."

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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.

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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.