Mind Bomb, 1989

It holds up. Almost 27 years and it holds up extraordinarily well.  The Quietus piece is a little breathlessly shallow and cloying, but that's not a big deal--I get it.  I always figured the stark and blunt content of the album comes from an implied narration done from the perspective of a survivor of all the political and personal violence described in the music.  The album is not presented as a premonition but as a memory--a painful and debilitating memory of a survivor who would rather have just died with almost everyone else and made everything easier.  Whatever, the music is awesome from Johnny Marr and the band and the lyrics both touching and hilarious, sometimes simultaneously.  And the content is terribly prescient.  Matt Johnson was writing in 1988 & 1989, and he really did see so much of the coming shit storm.