8. The Curtain Hits The Cast (1996)

The title The Curtain Hits The Cast brings to mind an Emily Dickinson poem “There’s A Certain Slant Of Light,” in which she writes, “There’s a certain slant of light,/ On winter afternoons/ That oppresses, like the weight/ Of cathedral tunes.” Throughout this album, the curtain referenced in the title symbolically casts away the light, whether it’s on the epic dirge opus “Do You Know How to Waltz?,” the incomprehensibility of time and distance on the nutmeg sweet “Over the Ocean,” or the smoldering existential inquest of “Lust.” It’s perhaps the band’s most hermetically insular record in a discography rife with them.