Laughing Stock by Talk Talk

Laughing Stock, Talk Talk's fifth and final studio album, came out on 16 September 1991, and it sounds like a band dissolving into the air. Bassist Paul Webb was gone, leaving singer Mark Hollis and drummer Lee Harris, and after a bitter exit from EMI they landed at Polydor, which put the record out on its freshly revived jazz imprint, Verve. Producer Tim Friese-Greene and engineer Phill Brown spent from September 1990 to April 1991 at Wessex Sound Studios in London, coaxing improvised parts out of a large cast of players while Hollis chased exactly the right atmosphere with a perfectionist's patience.

The result pushes further down the road Spirit of Eden opened: long silences, hushed murmurs, sudden bursts of noise, "Ascension Day" lurching toward the edge. The band broke up soon after, but the record's reputation only grew. Pitchfork later gave it a perfect score and named it the 11th best album of the '90s, and Stylus called it the greatest post-rock album of all.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.