The Best Dream Pop Albums of the '80s

Capitol took a punt in 1988 and gave a Cocteau Twins album its first proper American release, which is how a band from Grangemouth who sang in no known language ended up racked in US record shops. 'Carolyn's Fingers' is the reason it worked: Elizabeth Fraser vaults an octave mid-syllable while Robin Guthrie's guitar chimes underneath like a music box somebody left running.

Ivo Watts-Russell never had a band here — This Mortal Coil was 4AD's boss assembling whoever happened to be in the building that week. The one everybody knows is 'Song To The Siren,' a Tim Buckley cover with Elizabeth Fraser singing over Robin Guthrie's tremolo guitar and nothing else at all. No drums, no bass. David Lynch spent years trying to license it.

Bobby Gillespie had gone off to run Primal Scream by the time the Reid brothers made this, so they replaced him with a drum machine and turned the feedback down. Purists howled about it for years. Then 'April Skies' went to No. 8 in the UK, the highest they ever charted, and it turned out the songs had been in there underneath the noise all along.

Kramer cut the whole thing at Noise New York in a handful of days, and you can hear the room on every take — Dean Wareham's guitar sounds like it's coming from the far end of it. 'Blue Thunder' is the one to play first: a two-chord drive with Naomi Yang's bass holding the floor steady while the guitar solo wanders off and forgets to come back.

Two weeks in a residential studio in Wales, on Creation's money, and Kevin Shields came out with the record that made everyone else go and buy a tremolo arm. It was Bilinda Butcher's first full album with the band. 'Feed Me with Your Kiss' is the violent one — the guitar bends flat under the chorus like the tape is warping, which is more or less what he was doing to it.

Angelo Badalamenti wrote the music, David Lynch wrote the words, and Julee Cruise sang them so far back in the mix she sounds like she's performing in the next room. The instrumental version of 'Falling' turned up as the Twin Peaks theme a year later, which is how a dream pop record ended up soundtracking prime-time American television.

Alex Ayuli and Rudy Tambala had just come off co-writing M/A/R/R/S's 'Pump Up the Volume,' a UK No. 1, and spent every scrap of the goodwill on this instead — dub space, jazz chords and guitars that dissolve on contact. 'Baby Milk Snatcher' is the way in: a Thatcher joke for a title, and a rhythm that keeps sliding out from under the melody.

Five years passed between The Blue Nile's first album and this one, which was normal for them — their label was Linn, the Glasgow hi-fi manufacturer, and nobody there was chasing a release schedule. 'The Downtown Lights' takes almost seven minutes to say very little and it is the best thing they ever did: synth pads, a drum sound like distant traffic, Paul Buchanan sounding wrecked.

David Roback and Kendra Smith made exactly one album together for SST before Smith walked off mid-tour and a teenage Hope Sandoval took her place, which is literally how Mazzy Star began. The title track, 'Happy Nightmare Baby,' drags a Velvets two-chord groove through molasses, Roback's fuzz set to a slow simmer and Smith singing like she's half asleep and not remotely bothered about it.

Robin Guthrie produced this one for 4AD and Elizabeth Fraser turns up to sing on a couple of tracks, which tells you the company Dif Juz kept even if almost nobody remembers them. They were largely an instrumental band. 'Love Insane' is where the guitars, the saxophone and the dub reverb finally agree on a groove, and it's a shame nobody was writing the genre's history yet.

Lawrence gave himself ten years to make ten albums and ten singles, then actually went and did it, which is the most Felt fact available. This is the Creation one, powered start to finish by Martin Duffy's organ — Duffy later joined Primal Scream. 'Rain of Crystal Spires' leads with that Hammond figure and never lets the guitars take the song off him.

A year at Wessex Studios, mostly in the dark, taping hours of improvisation and cutting it down to six pieces — EMI paid for all of it and got no single in return. Call it a border case if you like; the post-rock crowd claim it too. 'I Believe in You' builds from almost nothing to a cathedral choir, with Mark Hollis singing about his brother's heroin addiction.

Geffen signed them, Dave Allen produced, and The Chameleons made their only major-label album — then their manager died suddenly and the band came apart within a year. 'Swamp Thing' is the song that outlived all of it: Reg Smithies and Dave Fielding stacking guitar lines that ring rather than strum, over a bassline Mark Burgess plays like he's leading the band from the back.

Gordon Sharp had already sung on This Mortal Coil's first album before he made this, and the contrast is the whole point — where that record floated, this one claws. Dais reissued it decades later for the people who'd only ever heard about it. 'It's Luxury' is two minutes of scraped guitar and Sharp howling, and it belongs here as proof of what dream pop sounds like furious.