Pet Shop Boys: Behavior (1991)
Cocteau Twins: Heaven Or Las Vegas (1990)
The masterpiece of Dream Pop, Heaven Or Las Vegas perfects the Cocteau Twins' evocation of the moment at which language evaporates, moving beyond the incomprehensibility of Treasure to present a texture that coalesces around words as if by accident; or, rather, characterises them as little more than the accidental by-products of a sonic fractal, whose infinite reiterations are merely opened, rather than contained, by the band. The result is a vision of the world immediately before it is bracketed by language; a sensory bombardment that imbues everything with the everlasting, pyrotechnic sunset of Las Vegas, gesturing towards the sublimity - and ambiguity - of consciousness. Even more beautifully, it is a vision of language just before it is bracketed by language, of words as a sensory, rather than semiotic, phenomenon - the lurid maraschino cherry that vocalist Elizabeth Fraser rolls around her mouth, with insatiable delight. From this perspective, the band's decision to name themselves after the French surrealist may have less to do with his shared taste for dream states than with the irreducible, inexplicable beauty of his name, while their ultimate gesture is to explicate music as the attempt to give colour to the blind.
Pet Shop Boys: Please (1986)
Kate Bush: Hounds Of Love (1985)
Despite featuring some of Bush's strongest moments, Hounds Of Love ultimately feels like an apology for the outstanding idiosyncrasies of The Dreaming, and an attempt to renew her standing with a public alienated from its 'weirdness'. To that end, the A-side, Hounds Of Love, features a collection of fairly accessible pop songs, including "Running Up That Hill", "Hounds Of Love" and "Cloudbusting", all of which are lyrically, instrumentally and compositionally impressive, but refrain from the vocal pyrotechnics of the earlier album, with the exception of such isolated moments as the chorus of "The Big Sky" - "You never understood me/ You never really tried" - whose reproach seems to go beyond its ostensibly romantic subject matter. The B-side, The Ninth Wave, is a collection of songs about women drowning, or lost at sea and, at first glance, would seem to represent both an experimental and vocal counterbalance to the A-side, especially since Bush's voice might best be described as a malicious fludity, threatening to overwhelm both her and the listener with its amorphous, affronting metamorphoses. However, the result is too close to an electronic soundscape to take advantage of the extent to which Bush's voice is itself such a soundscape, making her own vocals seem curiously redundant - as if the allegory were in fact of her own commodification, or transformation, into a palatable presence. That said, the horrific distortions of "Waking The Witch" shock the listener out of complacency, while the shorter tracks ("And Dream Of Sheep", "Under Ice" and "The Morning Fog") restore Bush with some qualified agency, as do isolated segments of "Hello Earth" and "Jig Of Life".
Frankie Goes To Hollywood: Welcome To The Pleasuredome (1984)
Bob Dylan: Infidels (1983)
As Dylan's first emergence from orthodox Christianity, Infidels is suffused with his rediscovery of the Bible as a figurative, rather than evangelical, tool; that is, his rediscovery of himself. Concomitantly, the New Testament imagery that preoccupies Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot Of Love is replaced by a more prophetic register, as evinced in the most panoramic, penetrating eye since The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. Not only do Dylan's critiques take on an uncharacteristically global quality (the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in "Neighbourhood Bully", globalisation itself in "Union Sundown"), but the surface of the moon, and the Universe beyond, is frequently used as a co-ordinate: "From Broadway to the Milky Way/That's alot of territory indeed." However, the central statement is undoubtedly a trio of soft rock numbers - "Don't Fall Apart On Me Tonight", "Sweetheart Like You" and, above all, the magnificent "Jokerman", one of Dylan's most extraordinary, under-rated works. Not only do these lend themselves most fruitfully to Mark Knopfler's textured production, but they both subvert and complete soft rock's tendency to etherealise romance, if only by clarifying Dylan's project as romancing the ethereal; a love affair with the Bible, whose "shadowy world" is opened up by "Jokerman"'s midrashic intertextuality.
Kate Bush: The Dreaming (1982)
David Bowie: Low (1977)
Marvin Gaye: What's Going On (1971)
Simon & Garfunkel: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary And Thyme (1966)
Bob Dylan: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963)