Hey, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well.

It's time for another Starter Pack video where I hit you with a series of recommendations for a bunch of albums and a bunch of artists within a given genre. This time, the subject, goth rock.

Yes, we are talking goth rock, and just like the last time we did this, we are embarking on this recommendation series, this entry recommendation series with my good friend and Giggins. Each of us picked three goth rock representative albums each for you to check out if you're looking to dip your toes into this genre.

Let's get into the conversation without any further ado.

Siouxsie and the Banshees - The Scream

A: Let's get started on these juicy, wonderful, delicious, goth rock recommendations. We are going to kick things off with this Siouxsie And The Banshees record.

Lots of amazing, game-changing, iconic goth rock figures throughout the history of the genre that we can't cover all of them. But Siouxsie Sioux is one of the biggest and most significant and most impactful of all of them. And obviously, by way of Siouxsie and the Banshees, she made that impact.

The Siouxsie and the Banshees discography is long. There are a lot of amazing highlights throughout it. But you decided for your recommendation here that you would go with the debut, The Scream. What made you go with this record? Why does it stand out to you in the discography? And also just in the greater canon of Gothic Rock?

G: This one, for me, you hear the hunger in their performances because they were so new at this point. Things would change as their discography went on. Any band does. They grow as a group. It's a little poppy, but very stark and dry production. It's punchy, it's dark, and there's a lot of stiff rhythms that I feel incorporate that gothic sound. But it's also post-punky, post-rocky at the same time. It's on that fine line of what is goth, what is post-punk, what is post-rock? They balanced that well, I think.

Siouxsie Sioux's vocals go anywhere from really sweet to screaming. You can hear her sound influencing Slater Kenny, Carrie Brownstein. Her vocals are completely out of the Siouxsie Sioux canon. But I chose this one because lyrically, it is dark, but there's a lot of heart to this thing. It could be guttural. There could be guitars that are a little bit more jangly, which I think was a gothic thing. There's slightly jangly guitars, but a spooky atmosphere. The whole album just sounds bleak. I really enjoy it.

Like I said before, dry production, but it rocks the whole way through and it's uniquely original.They're instructing songs on their own pattern, their own feel, making something that hadn't been done before.

In terms of goth rock, lyrically, yeah, it's got some darker moments, but they also cover "Helter Skelter", so they know what's influencing them. And doing things their own way. It's a completely original sound. If I was there in '78, this would have been mind-blowing to hear for the first time.

AF: No, absolutely. I like that you brought up one of those last points about just the general vibe of the album, because I feel like a lot of the appeal and magic and character of goth rock comes up in the ambiance. Is it bringing that dark, eerie, strange, unnerving, uncomfortable sound? Is the album that weird girl standing in the corner staring everyone down, just making everybody uncomfortable? Like she's been looking at us all night. Like, what is going on?

G: I feel the daggers.

AF: Right, exactly. Yeah. You want to feel the album staring you down and stabbing those daggers into you and making things a little weird and a little awkward, just harshing the vibe a bit.

G: A little uncomfortable.

AF: This this record, most checks those boxes, most certainly. And as you were also saying, there is almost that quality where is it, 'Oh, is it like goth rock is a little post-punky?' It's important to note that there is that transition period before we're fully in goth rock mode, not only just for the genre, but Siouxsie and the Banshees themselves. It's like a lot of that groundwork being laid by bands like Joy Division, and then it going on from there. Because while Joy Division may not necessarily be technically one of the bands in those genres, they obviously played really well to that crowd and went on to influence so many of the bands that went on to define what goth rock was.

As far as time period goes, you're not really getting much more in on the ground floor than you are in 1978.

G: Yeah, it's early.

AF: It's pretty freaking early for the genre, and we're not going to be able to cover every major happening or even development or within the style of music in this recommendation. I mean, that's why I limited it to a Gothic Rock. Without that limitation, we could have gone like, gothic country and dark wave. The more club electric stuff, too. But we're trying to stick more to a rock lane. But a lot of even that starts off here with early records like this.

G: Yeah. Hell of an album.

AF: If you want a really early, clear, defining record in this style, you're not really getting much better than this other than just the blueprint being laid out in front of you.

Bauhaus - The Sky's Gone Out

AF: Next is my pick, and I had a bit of a similar philosophy with this one, presuming that that's why you went with that record. But I also threw into the mix here, The Sky's Gone Out by Bauhaus in 1982. It came several years later. As far as goth rock goes, this is so boilerplate. It's awesome. It's just so good. It's so good.

You could probably say their debut is maybe more boilerplate than this to a degree. But by this point, a few records in, the band had a more concrete idea of what they were doing. The performances, and especially the vocals, were wilder and more intense. And the band is really just going all out and leaning into, 'We're just going to create a rock sound, a rock vibe that's unnerving.'

And again, you really hear that late '70s post-punk, that Joy Division, eerie, spacy ambiance. You have that hollow, plucking bass. You have the wild washed-out guitars. The vocals are weird and off-putting as fuck. It's all just intense. It's all dark, just like the Siouxsie record that we just talked about, it's really all about the ambiance. It's all about the intensity of that darkness. It's straightforward. It's no must, no fuss. It's about the theatrics and the drama and just very stark, dark, harsh rock instrumentation, which is why I picked it.

As far as essential goth rock blueprints go, this is pretty much it. Once again, you're getting a lot of those really clear post-punk influences, too. Later down the road, as we discuss goth rock and goth-centric artists who made their way more in the '90s or the 2000s or even more recently than that, you do hear that post-punk influence dropping off. It's obviously dark, it's unnerving, but you're not really getting that super clear Joy Division connection that you would from any artist who was coming out with a record, either in the late '70s or the early to mid-'80s.

But still, that DNA creativity tree starts off with records like this and the Siouxsie record, which again, essential listens if you're trying to get into this genre.

Anything else you want to add to this record before we move on to your next pick?

G: Yeah. I mean, for as weird as it is, it's also very digestible. It's tense and it's weird, and it's got that bleakness to it. But the atmosphere they create is really fun to dig into for as off-putting as some of the lyrics might be. But vocally, it ranges anywhere from screaming to really confident, smooth, almost Bowie-esque at times. He did Ziggy Stardust around that time.

The production works really well because you think '80s production, everything has that big, boomy drum sound. But this works really well because when you have those jarring guitars, those guitar stabs and the reverb derby drums, it creates this otherworldly sound. It comes from a different dimension.

"Exquisite Corpse" is one of my favorites on this album because you have all these different moments of there's screaming, there's dub, there's tension. I was going to pick their first album, actually, so I'm glad you picked this one because I love this album.

Yeah, man, it's great. Nailed it.

The Cramps - The Smell of Female

AF: Alright, moving on to the next one, a recommendation that you brought to the table It's actually going to be from one of my favorite bands. This is actually the first band I ever owned a vinyl record of. First time I ever bought a vinyl record.

G: Oh, no way!

AF: It was their live album, Rockin' & Reelin in Auckland, New Zealand. The Cramps with Smell of Female. So you went with this early live project from the band that has a handful of tracks on it that came out very much at the front end of their career. What made you go with this over another live record of theirs or a studio album, something like that?

G: I love this one. The Cramps for me, I'm always having a tough time saying that they're goth because they're not truly goth.

AF: They're goth-adjacent. They're goth-off vibes.

G: I think they got more goth as they went on. Their lyrics became more like, This is Halloween stuff. I don't know.

AF: Early on, they were singing about Monsters and stuff like that.

G: That's true.

AF: To me, as far as goth goes, they're camp. They're like the leg of the genre that's high camp. We're talking about monsters. We're talking about literal darkness and devils and scary women. Scary, dark, threatening, threatening ladies.

G: I feel like music Basically, they don't sound like a lot of other goth bands at that time.

AF: It's true. But if you looked at them- If you looked at them side by side with any other goth band, you'd be like, That's a goth band for sure.

G: Probably one of the best band logos of all It's the coolest-looking logo.

AF: Absolutely.

G: But I think if you were into other goth groups, you would have loved the cramps as well. But they definitely take their influences from the '50s, definitely that rockabilly guitar feel.

AF: Rockabilly garage rock, so on and so forth. But there's still like classic goth rock bands and records of that era, there's still that spaciness. There's still that chaos. There's still that noise. Another thing that's worth discussing is the parallels between a lot of goth rock early on and later in psychedelic music. The Crampss most definitely embrace the psychedelian.

G: They were fans. Absolutely. Yeah. No, I picked this one because it's live and a lot of these songs were new for that record at the time. You hear the energy in their performances. They're feeding off the audience. I'm a sucker for that stuff. But I think live albums give a good sense of what the scene was like. It contextualizes going to the show and being a part of the scene at that time. Especially with goth rock, at that time, it was fairly new. It's cool to see a genre emerging and having these where people find each other and enjoy this music together.

The album for me is just like, it's raw, it's rocking. I love Lux's vocals. The dude was crazy. For me, I think it's a really cool representation of what goth can also be. It's not just atmosphere that's super heavy and dark, but they can have fun.

AF: If this record is proof of anything, it's that gothic music, gothic rock, gothic whatever, it doesn't necessarily have to adhere to a strict esthetic criteria. You can qualify as a gothic band based on vibes. It doesn't really matter if you've got those really washed-out, strung-out guitars or foreboding vocals or even that direct post-punk influence or anything. As long as you're bringing something that's unnerving and unsettling to the table and making some broad representation of darkness through whatever means that you're doing that. The Cramps achieve that.'

Again, just something weird, something unsettling. There are other ways in which I feel like the band, like I was saying earlier, qualifies with those illusions to creepiness and eeriness and monsters and 1950s cinema culture and so on and so forth.

Also, fantastically horny band. One of the horniest bands of all time. Which I feel like that also ties into it a little bit. There is a history of Goth rock and Goth music that ties into weird carnal alternative forms and explorations of sexuality, and The Cramps most definitely represent that, too in their work.

Good and interesting pick, and most certainly, Goth, in my eyes, without any doubt whatsoever, even if it doesn't sound like a freaking Cure record.

G: Well, that's the thing. You think God, you think just sad, lonely lyrics, and here they are talking about monsters from outer space. I think that's the weird part. People are like, 'Are they really Goth?' But yeah, I'd say they are.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Let Love In

AF: Next in the list, one that I picked was Nick Cave's Let Love In, 1994 record. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, actually. I don't want to forget the And the Bad Seeds, as there are Nick Cave albums, and there are Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds albums.

I went with this one because I feel like this is like a representation of the genre in the '90s, where things really started to get... '90s and late '80s, when things really started to get very theatrical. You have artists who are really embracing more refined instrumentation, almost like a cinematic instrumentation.

This is very clearly a rock album from front to back. But when you're looking at tracks like the opener, "Red Right Hand", which has been used in, I believe, at least a few movie soundtracks, there's a real cinematic dramatic eariness there. There's an eariness there.

Also on top of it, Nick Cave, one of a kind, once-in-a-lifetime vocalist for sure. A singer who's voice just like... When he's singing about the devil, you feel it in a way that you don't with any other artist doing that.

G: He knows that guy.

AF: Yeah, he's buds with that dude.

G: They've had coffee before. It wasn't fun.

AF: He's singing from a place of knowing that guy personally. He's speaking about the devil from a place of authority.

So, I mean, there's, again, It's like we're not talking about the chaos and the punk intensity of a lot of those early Gothic rock works that were essential for laying the groundwork. But instead, later down the road, years later, embracing still that darkness, still those unsettling vibes, and really amplifying the eeriness in a way that was purely theatrical, with some great lyrics as well.

Nick Cave is underrated, as far as a storyteller goes on the songwriting front. And I understand why, because his voice and the production that goes into his records, just the general catchiness of his songs, too, are so incredible. It's sometimes easy to overlook how good the lyrics are and can be, but still fantastic, still incredible.

As far as songwriting, as far as production, as far as a general vibe, this was essential as well. And out of all the records that we've listed today, in my opinion, I think it probably depends on the person, but I think one of the most easily digestible, too.

There are people who may not be that into punk or post punk or rock that is chaotic, but can find something in what Nick Cave does because it is so cleanly and colorfully produced. It does sound like you're listening to a movie at some points, which I feel like is something that a maybe a broader swath of music listeners could get into and appreciate, as opposed to something that's more alternative and unnerving, like Bauhaus.

G: That's a good way to put it. I mean, I definitely get that cinematic quality from this album as well. But I think you take the elements of what made Goth, and then it's almost like if that was the stage play, this is the movie. It's Hollywood-ized, but I use that term loosely.

There's an impassioned sadness to Nick's vocal delivery delivery that's really good on the ears. It sets him apart from anybody else. But I also feel like there's a maturity in his delivery and in the lyrics that has a wisdom to what's happening. So going off what you said of knowing the devil, you believe what he's singing. He could sing about baking the best bread he's ever had, and you'd be like, 'Hell, yeah, man, I get it. I'm crying in that bread with you.'

For as many times as this album does go crashing along and have a rocking time, there's so many beautiful moments that offset that. So you're on a roller coaster of feelings with this record.

AF: So he was like 36 when this album came out.

G: Was he really?

AF: Yeah, 36. Which I mean, tracks with that maturity that you're talking about. Because if you get into this guy's work and you go back and you go way back, you're talking about him being in The Birthday Party, that infamous chaotic, almost like... And I love this genre for the most part, but I would say almost categorically like unlistenable noise rock

G: I almost put one of their albums on here, actually.

AF: As far as noise ride, there is an element of noise rock that you could say its quality level can almost be judged by how difficult it is to listen to. The birthday party is definitely one of those top bands in that genre that are really fucking hard to listen to.

G: Take your time with them.

AF: For sure. It's interesting to think of him, obviously, being in that and being at that point in his career and eventually down the road developing into this. It's something that is so poised and is so focused and is so refined and methodically assembled. Going from that point of pure drug-fueled insanity and chaos to something just more dramatic and sad and forlorn such as this.

Definitely speaks to the range of someone like Nick Cave, but also just the range of this vibe, this esthetic, this genre, this scene, whatever you want to call it.

G: Right. He does a lot with it.

AF: And still him being able to appeal to much that same crowd in a different way without being perceived as somebody, 'Oh, he sold out or he gave up this or he gave up that', or whatever, still being appreciated artistically in his own right while going for an entirely different sound. From there to here is just one of many sections of evolution across the entirety of his career because he has really had one of the longest and most successful and most interesting, and most diverse and well-evolved careers in all of popular and underground music, unquestionably.

Really up there with Bowie, Prince, anybody that you want to name. And he's still at it, literally now, coming out with new records. I believe he even has one Wild God on the way, which the single so far have sounded good.

G: It's crazy.

The Cure - Seventeen Seconds

AF: Next, next, next. We have a couple more recommendations. This one is from you. I feel like having a The Cure record in the mix was going to happen. That was a necessity. As far as goth rock goes, they're one of those go-to bands.

But the interesting thing about picking any Cure record for a recommendation list such as this is that they, too, have such a crazy and wild and diverse discography that multiple points of it, you could say, influence different legs of the goth genre. The impact that a record like this had for its time is totally different than what you could say a record like Pornography had.

G: Or Disintegration years later.

AF: Absolutely. So it's like there are albums on The Cure spectrum that are just impeccably dark and tortured and overwhelming and unforgiving. And there are records in their discography that are light and whimsicle and happy and cheery and sweet on the ears.

With them still being considered an essential band within that goth canon, they're really pushing the boundaries of what a band in that genre could even be considered doing. Because they've written some of the biggest pop hits of all time.

G: Yeah, "Friday I'm In Love" is a massive pop song. It's on normal radio. You won't hear this on normal radio.

AF: No, exactly. What made you go with Seventeen Seconds, which is not even considered one of the most popular records? For many, it's maybe not even a top top-three Cure record, but you went with this one. What drew you to this?

G: This would probably be my top five for The Cure if I was doing a rating list. This one looks like how the cover looks. It's just miserable.

AF: It's very bleak, it's very washed out. You're looking at it like, 'What is this even an image of?'

G: I don't know what the hell is the picture of, but it just sounds like depression. Every single lyric on this thing is sad and love lost and lonely and confused. Every song is searching for something. The cover represents that completely.

Robert sounds like he's on the verge of tears the entire time, which is something he would use on and off throughout his career. But this one in particular, the whole record is stark. The drums are unsympathetic and robotic. The guitars stab at you the whole time. There are nice little jangly moments of piano here and there, which I feel like gives it a little bit of life.

But overall, it just sounds like the dead of winter. It just sounds like the most unhappiest birthday party you've ever gone to. It's really off-putting. I feel like if you've never gotten into the cure before, I wouldn't start with this album at all.

AF: Yeah, it's not the easiest listen.

G: No, it's not a digestible album at first.

AF: But again, I feel like the point we're recommending some unnerving records.

G: This is one. I mean, yeah, this is totally one of them. There's a song called "A Forest" on here, which is just like... It's probably one of my favorite Cure songs. It's just really, really weird. It's got a couple of moments where you feel they're going to develop into something else. Only a couple of albums later they had The Head on the Door, which is a complete departure from what this thing sounds like. "At Night" is a great song on here, super sad lyrics.

Overall, for me, when I think of goth, this is as bleak as bleak can get. Not their most well-known album, but one I would check out for sure. If you want to hear something very different, sit down with this one. It's not good for driving, too, but sit down with it.

AF: For sure. Also, again, I feel like it's important to highlight a record, any record that embraces more that bleak vibe, because I think that's essential to the greater goth tree of essential artists and esthetics and albums. Even if this album isn't as easily digestible as some later records in the band's discography or even their first comparatively, which is more of a post-punky, pub-rocky an album.

G: This album for me is also one of those albums... You remember the South via the Goth Kids on South Park? This is the album they would enjoy the most. It's one of those things.

AF: This record also puts Robert Smith in that position of, he's the original emo boy, the O-G emo boy.

G: I think his juxtaposition on this album is cool because he adds the human element. The rest of this album is so sterile sounding. He adds the human element, and it's just painful. Yeah, that's all I got.

AF: Love it.

Chelsea Wolf - Abyss

AF: Last one that I'm throwing into the mix here that I think represents some newness, some recency. Though this record came out in 2015, and she just dropped an album this year, which is also fantastic, that album is maybe a bit more electronic, a little more trip-hop influenced, which is why I went with this one.

It is the 2015 record from Chelsea Wolf, Abyss, which I don't know if there are too many artists - I mean, they're out there obviously, goth rock and goth everything is alive and well - but as far as artists who came out in the last 10 to 15 years, there are a few out there that, to me, are as consistently interesting and have the cultural draw that Chelsea Wolf does.

It's hard to say she's new blood at point because she's like, with a career that's still going very strong 10 plus years, she feels, at least in internet years, like a vet at this point, which, again, is very weird to think. But if you go through Chelsea's entire catalog, she really does run the gamut from electronic dark wave stuff to that spacy, weird, unsettling, post-punky goth rock stuff, more classic stuff, gothic folk, and more ballads, maybe slightly with a country twang.

Records like this represent more of an ethereal wave and almost metal-centric side of the genre, because obviously, we didn't really spend a whole lot of time going into any Gothic industrial stuff or any of the more metal-adjacent sides of the genre, of which there are many, many, many, many, many...

G: It gets heavy.

AF: You could really do a video just on that. But out of all the records that have been recommended in this video, this is handily the heaviest. The very slow, just oppressive, crushing, du-metal guitar cars all over all these tracks are just heavy as hell. They're killer. They just all sound like an avalanche. But what makes it all work is that the riffs and grooves are so good.

On top of it, Chelsea these eerie, strange, beckoning vocals, which are gorgeous, add a bit of sweetness to that harshness and that bitterness. Sort of like The Cure record that you were just talking about, it breathes a bit of life into it. It's not all just this heavy, crushing, bleak thing. There is a whimsy and a beauty, and I guess in a way, a romance about it that gets cut into, laced into the whole vibe with her vocals.

If you enjoy this record, I feel like she's doing that once again on this new record that she did, though it's not as metal-centric. It's also just as heavy and more industrial in terms of influence. But once again, it's her vocals that cut through all that mayhem and that thickness and that heaviness and bring a sweetness to all of it. Just a different recipe, I suppose.

If you're looking for something that, again, is crushing, is heavy, is eerie, and again, with those beckoning vocals, this is just an incredible representation of the sound, of the genre, of the ways in which it's evolved since its inception in the late '70s. Just mixing in a bit of those metal influences and guitars for something that is a bit more aggressive. It's got more oomph to it.

G: Yeah. I would add, for as heavy as this thing is, there's a lot of Sonic textures that she plays with, and she creates a lot of landscapes. For as adventurous as it is, it also comes back once in a while with some acoustic guitars, which brings a nice little change of pace.

AF: Yeah, it's dynamic.

G: It's dynamic for sure. But she's really good at creating swirling, swelling moments, especially on survive. That thing cranks. It just blossoms and blooms into this cacophony of just epicness.

You mentioned a good point about her voice being sweet sometimes, and I like that element because the bottom end of this record is so earth-crushingly heavy. When you have her on top, wilting sometimes vocally, It's a nice dynamic. If you ever heard this one, I'd recommend this one to start her career with if you're jumping into Chelsea Wolf's discography, would you?

AF: Yeah, if you're already familiar with an into metal, most definitely start with This is a great song, it's great production. If you're somebody who's drawn to that genre, generally, this is a fantastic, this is an amazing starting point.

If you're more of an old-school goth head and you want something that's less crushing more spacy, maybe a bit more electronic, I would say listen to Pain is Beauty instead. There's way more like sequenced beats on that thing, more electronics. I've been impressed with her since her 2011 record, Apokalypsis, that was the first time I reviewed any of her stuff.

I'm pretty sure there's got to be a review on the channel for that record, and I've been reviewing her consistently since. Again, if you're looking for something that has more breathing room, I would go for one of those two records or even Birth of Violence. But outside of that, a lot of her catalog is pretty heavy, especially, again, this latest LP, too.

AF: Those are the six recommendations we want to hit you guys with. To get you into goth rock and goth-centric stuff from two of the whitest nerds that you've seen in your entire life.

Anything else to add before we go?

G: Maybe don't listen to all these in the same day.

AF: Yeah, break it up.

G: Yeah, take breaks.

AF: Yeah, do one a day.

G: Yeah, do one a day. Put something happy on afterward.

AF: Microdose it.

You're the best. Thank you for reading and watching. Feel free to let the class know in the comments what other albums and artists you recommend in this genre. And yeah, appreciate you coming through.

Anthony Fantano. Goth Rock. Forever.