The Velvet Underground & Nico

Lou Reed famously claimed that everyone who bought one of the 30,000 copies of this sold in the first five years started a band. It wasn't about the skill; it was about the lack of polish. Andy Warhol forced Nico onto the record, and the band hated it, but that frigid, detached vocal on "Femme Fatale" is exactly what makes the thing work as a piece of art-school misery. You’ve got a massive pile of modern indie and folk in your collection. You’re spinning a lot of stuff that clearly owes a debt to Reed’s cynical detachment and Cale’s avant-garde noise experiments. This is the bedrock for the gloom-pop you’re already digging into. If you want to know where the jagged edges in your current favorites come from, stop here first.

source: the clerk