Though each musical era has its own peculiar trends, no decade can compete with the '80s when it comes to bizarre, distinctive record production. Anyone can identify a '80s song immediately: chorus on the guitars, reverb on the drums, cheesy synths and a cold atmosphere. Virtually every album released during the decade succumbed to this style, with these notable exceptions...
1. Tom Waits - Rain Dogs (1985)
The key word when considering the production on Tom Waits albums is "organic." So much of the music that came from the '80s sounded robotic and inhuman, but Tom Waits escaped this trend with an organic and natural sound, achieved through acoustic instruments. The only electric instrument on Rain Dogs is guitar, but even they're recorded in a classic rockabilly style.
2. Pixies - Surfer Rosa (1988)
Surfer Rosa was one of the earliest albums to be produced (or "engineered") by Steve Albini, who gives the album a brutal, lo-fi haze. Like most Albini-produced albums, drums are integral to the atmosphere, and while drums from '80s albums were typically compressed, bright, and treated with artificial reverb, the drums on Surfer Rosa were recorded so that the listener could feel the room they were performed in.
3. Slayer - Reign in Blood (1986)
Thrash metal was conceived as the merging of metal's heaviness and punk's speed and attitude. The "punk" side of thrash was never more evident than in the punchy production of Slayer's seminal Reign in Blood, produced by Rick Rubin. Every instrument, including singer Tom Araya's voice, was recorded totally dry and pushed up front in the mix. As guitarist Kerry King once described it, listening to the album feels like you're getting hit right in the skull.
4. Dinosaur Jr. - You're Living All Over Me (1987)
Not only does You're Living All Over Me not sound like a typical '80s rock album, it doesn't even sound like a typical '80s punk album. It doesn't have a gritty, trebly sound like Minor Threat or Bad Brains, but it also isn't drenched in chorus and reverb like Hüsker Dü or the Replacements. Instead, You're Living All Over Me has a murky and mysterious sound, allegedly inspiring the enveloping guitar tones of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless a few years later.
5. Beat Happening - Black Candy (1989)
If Beat Happening couldn't be bothered to tune its guitars, it probably wasn't the type of band to get an album recorded properly. Though there is occasionally reverb on the vocals and drums, it's the kind of dark, cheap reverb frequently heard on scrappy, lo-fi albums like this.
6. Nirvana - Bleach (1989)
Nirvana famously recorded their debut album Bleach in thirty hours for $606.17, and though it doesn't sound quite as cheap as that price tag may imply, it's still nowhere near the sonic perfection of the band's subsequent albums. In fact, its follow up Nevermind, which was credited with destroying big '80s rock, sounds more like a shiny '80s classic than Bleach does.
