Permanent Records

Neutral Milk Hotel only made two studio albums, but the one that gave the band a cult following was its last. In The…

It can take years, if not decades, for the saddest songs to reveal themselves as such. The symphonies of Sergei…

By the time Katy Perry released Teenage Dream in August 2010, the album had already given us the summer of…

The American release of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s second full-length album, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas…

It seems every few months on Twitter another “four high school albums” prompt makes the rounds, inspiring…

On April 5, 1986, French singer Serge Gainsbourg told Whitney Houston on live TV that he wanted to fuck her. Looking…

In the fledging “alternative rock” world of 1990, the words “major-label debut” were greeted with a mix of…

In the immediate months before Gang Of Four was about to make its incendiary debut album, Entertainment!, guitarist A…

Starting with Hear It Is in 1986, Oklahoma City outfit The Flaming Lips had a pretty routine schedule in their…

The arc of music history is long, allowing us to find new favorites in the past or imagine a time when some…

In 1983, when much of the music world was turning toward “modern-sounding” synths and electronic music, one young…

One of the best things about old records is the liner notes. Pick up a jazz or pop LP of a certain vintage and…

In 1976, filmmaker Barbara Kopple released Harlan County U.S.A., a documentary delving into Kentucky coal miners’…

On her 2007 album How To Win!, stand-up comedian Maria Bamford tells a joke about her mother telling her she looks…

Devo was finished. The quintet—brothers Jerry and Bob Casale and Mark, Bob, and Jim Mothersbaugh—had gotten about as…

A baby and a breakup. The catalysts for one of the most celebrated albums of 1998 are of some the most difficult and…

There are one-hit wonders and one-album wonders. There are musicians who consistently craft top-notch singles, but…

When The A.V. Club put together an Inventory of George W. Bush-era political works that still hold up, we couldn’t…

Permanent Records is an ongoing closer look at the records that matter most.

Permanent Records is an ongoing closer look at the records that matter most.