Cat Power · 1998 · She wrote these songs after a night of screaming, sang them once, and never played them the same way again.

Cowboy Junkies · 1988 · They went into a Toronto church with one microphone and made an album that sounds like the room itself is listening.

Mary Margaret O'Hara · 1988 · She sang like a woman trying to remember a song she'd only ever heard in a dream.

Cat Power · 2006 · She walked into Ardent Studios with the Memphis Rhythm Band and a stack of broken-hearted songs — no safety net, no lo-fi hiding place.

A Girl Called Eddy · 2004 · She sat on the follow-up for fifteen years. This one record made the wait almost worth it.

Sarah McLachlan · 1993 · She turned piano ballads into stadium-filling anthems without losing the whisper.

The Sundays · 1992 · This album proves that you don't need to shout to fill a room. Harriet Wheeler's voice and David Gavurin's guitar create a silence you can fall into.

Wild Strawberries · 1994 · You pulled this CD from a sale bin in 2001 and it sounded good. Tonight, with the right headphones, it sounds like a secret.

Mekons · 1988 · Recorded in a freezing Leeds warehouse with no heating because the guitarist said it made the guitars sound wrong — and he was right.

Andy Shauf · 2016 · Andy Shauf made an album where every character at a party gets their own song, and you'll swear you've met every single one.

Jenny Lewis · 2014 · Produced by Ryan Adams at his home studio, this album sounds like the last honest record to come out of that strange era.

Natalie Prass · 2015 · The producer of the album also runs Spacebomb Records, and this is what happens when you let a 23-year-old with punk roots write a soul record for a 40-piece orchestra.

Gary Clark · 2014 · The Scottish songwriter who gave us Danny Wilson finally made the quiet album he always had in him.

Neil Young · 1974 · The one where he stopped trying to make friends and started making records that sounded like the inside of his head.

Mike Oldfield · 1973 · A nineteen-year-old in a converted barn made one of the strangest best-sellers of the 1970s, and nobody — least of all him — has quite explained how.

Pearl Jam · 1991 · Eddie Vedder sang like a man trapped in his own skin, and the rest of us heard something we didn't know we needed.

Boards of Canada · 1998 · This is what happens when two Scottish brothers spend years building a time machine out of analog synths and old VHS tapes, and the only place they can go is the ghost of your own childhood.

Yo La Tengo · 2000 · They made an album that sounds like the moment after you've finally stopped talking.

Angelo Badalamenti · 1990 · Badalamenti's score is the third character in Twin Peaks, breathing humidity and dread.

Tim Buckley · 1967 · Tim Buckley's second album found him turning his back on pure folk and into a darker, orchestral world that his voice could barely contain.