The Smiths: Strangeways, Here We Come

Most fans say it's a toss up between Strangeways and The Queen is Dead, but I've never had any doubts: this is The Smiths' finest album. It's cleaner, sharper, and smarter technically and technologically. It' also more liberal with its irony, which is less "poetastical" than on The Queen (e.g. "I Know It's Over"). But maybe the best part of Strangeways is its low profile: if you check the track listing, you'll see that arguably the three best songs, "A Rush and a Push," "Death of a Disco Dancer," and "Paint a Vulgar Picture," were never singles or billboard hits, narrowing the distance between the work horse standards like "Last Night I Dreamt" and the oddball throwaways ("Unhappy Birthday"). Strangeways is no thematic set, but it has the consistency, coherence, and togetherness of one and, unlike its challenger, smoothly begins and ends in the same neoclassical repose, nonchalant, superior, and dismissive. Whereas The Queen sounds heavy, intricate, and baroque (code for unwieldy), Strangeways is graceful and buoyant, more Haydn than Hindemith. Now, add the delirious Bretonian text and you have one handsome, sickly-green silhouetted companion for all those awkward subway rides through the city when every seated woman studiously avoids eye contact with you and all the other unkempt males wearing headphones and secondhand sparkly shirts.

PS - I love The Queen is Dead.