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.

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.

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.

Yo-Yo Ma · 1983 · Solo cello. No overdubs. No audience. Just Bach and a man who has spent forty years trying to get it right.

Reference Recordings · 1997 · A record store demo disc that actually has musical integrity.

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

Bedouine · 2017 · Folk songs built from intuition rather than rules.

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

Dorothy Ashby · 1968 · She married the harp to a funk rhythm section and made it sound like the most natural thing in the world.

Ahmad Jamal · 1970 · Ahmad Jamal playing like he's solving a puzzle in real time, and the puzzle keeps changing shape.

Kadhja Bonet · 2016 · She plays harp and sings like a lost session singer from 1972—but the record came out in 2016.

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.

Joan Baez · 1960 · She walked into a hotel room and changed folk music forever.

The Millennium · 1968 · Curt Boettcher assembled a dream studio team and this is the only record they left behind.

Joe Henderson · 1967 · Orrin Keepnews let them set up in a semicircle with no isolation, and you can hear Henderson's foot tapping on the floor.

Bobby Hutcherson · 1968 · Van Gelder’s crispest vibraphone sound, Henderson’s tenor in full stride, and a rhythm section that never rushes. The one that gets overlooked because it came out in a weird year for Blue Note.

Dido · 1999 · She wrote dozens of versions of 'Thank You' before settling on the one that ended up on a record so quiet it made $20 million.

A Winged Victory for the Sullen · 2019 · Two men who make music so slow and huge it feels like a landscape — recorded with forty-eight strings in Budapest and mixed for the hours after midnight.

Caroline Shaw · 2019 · She treats her own voice like a violin, and the string quartet like a choir — then dissolves into something that sounds like light through stained glass.