Best Ever
Rock Album?

The consensus pick is The Queen Is Dead. The hipster pick is Meat Is Murder. The debut has its partisans. But Strangeways, Here We Come — named after a Manchester prison, released three weeks after the band imploded — is the album where The Smiths finally sounded as big as they felt. It’s their Abbey Road: a band falling apart while making the most sonically ambitious work of their career.

The production is the first thing you notice. Stephen Street, who’d engineered the previous records, got the producer credit here, and he pushed the sound outward in every direction. The guitars are layered and orchestral. The drums have room to breathe. Morrissey’s voice, always the focal point, now floats in space rather than fighting for it. This doesn’t sound like four guys in a room. It sounds like a vision.

Johnny Marr’s guitar work reaches its apex. “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” opens with two minutes of pure atmosphere — crowd noise, piano, strings — before the band enters with a progression so aching it borders on devotional. Marr plays rhythm and lead simultaneously, his parts interlocking into something that sounds simple until you try to pull it apart. He’s said this album let him explore textures he’d always wanted, and you can hear him stretching in every track.

“I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish” has the jauntiest melody on the record wrapped around typically mordant lyrics. “Girlfriend in a Coma” turns a premise that shouldn’t work — your girlfriend is dying and you’re oddly unbothered — into three minutes of perfect pop. “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before” was banned by the BBC for its reference to mass murder, which only enhanced its legend. The singles here are immaculate, even by Smiths standards.

But the deep cuts are where the album lives. “A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours” opens without guitars at all — just piano and voice, Morrissey at his most vulnerable. “Death of a Disco Dancer” stretches past six minutes, building to a noisy climax that suggests where Marr might have taken the band if they’d continued. “Paint a Vulgar Picture” is Morrissey’s acid take on the music industry’s exploitation of dead artists, and it’s more relevant now than it was in 1987.

“I Won’t Share You” closes the album with just Morrissey and Marr, autoharp and voice, a farewell so quiet it barely registers as music. The lyrics are about possession, jealousy, the refusal to let go — and knowing this was the last track the classic lineup would ever record gives them unbearable weight. They couldn’t share each other, as it turned out. The band was done.

The critical reception at the time was muted. The breakup overshadowed the music. Fans were grieving. But decades later, Strangeways has been reassessed as the masterpiece it always was — the sound of a band with nothing left to prove, taking risks because there was nothing left to lose. The orchestration that seemed excessive in 1987 now sounds like foresight. The production that seemed slick now sounds like confidence.

Every Smiths album is somebody’s favorite. This one is the favorite of people who want to hear what the band could do when they stopped being careful.

The Smiths: The Best Ever is ambition as farewell. Is Strangeways, Here We Come the Best Ever Smiths Album? You tell us.

Decide for Yourself:

• The 2017 remaster supervised by Johnny Marr is the definitive version.
• The original Rough Trade vinyl pressing has collectors’ value and period-accurate mastering.
• The Warner/Rhino reissue includes the 2011 remaster on 180-gram vinyl.