Sophisti-pop: the canon for after midnight

The genre's holy text. Paul Buchanan sings like a man phoning from an empty city; the synths shimmer and recede; “The Downtown Lights” is seven minutes of pure nocturnal ache. Released in 1989 on Linn (the hi-fi manufacturer's own label, which tells you everything about the fidelity), Hats took five years to make and sounds like it — every reverb tail placed by hand. The single most beloved sophisti-pop record on RYM, and deservedly.

Paddy McAloon is the movement's great songwriter, and Steve McQueen (1985, produced by Thomas Dolby) is where his vision arrived fully formed. Chord changes a jazz musician would envy, words too clever to be cool, and Dolby's production keeping it all weightless. “When Love Breaks Down” and “Appetite” are perfect pop; the deep cuts reward a decade of listening.

The album that made the whole aesthetic commercial. Sade Adu's 1984 debut on Epic — “Smooth Operator,” “Your Love Is King” — connected the dots between Roxy Music cool and Philadelphia soul, and sold by the truckload without ever raising its voice. Decades of bad imitations turned it into wallpaper; go back to the source and hear how restrained and strange it actually is.

Before Hats there was the 1984 debut, sparser and stranger, all synthetic strings and held breath. “Tinseltown in the Rain” is the standout — a love song that sounds like watching the city flood. Some Blue Nile devotees rate it above Hats for exactly this austerity. Either way, you need both.

The record that arguably started it all. By 1982 Bryan Ferry had sanded every rough edge off Roxy Music, leaving a 40-minute cruise of synth haze, fretless bass and that murmured croon. Often cited as the first sophisti-pop album; certainly the most glamorous. The blueprint for everything that followed — the saxophone, the smoke, the expensive melancholy.

Green Gartside started in scratchy post-punk and ended up making the slickest pop on earth. Cupid & Psyche 85 weaponises studio gloss in the service of impossibly catchy songs — “Wood Beez,” “The Word Girl,” “Perfect Way” — built with New York session players and a theorist's brain. Sophisti-pop's most intellectual prankster, hiding deconstruction inside chart hits.

Paul Weller burned down The Jam to do this: jazz, soul, French café affectation and a few genuinely great songs, all on 1984's Café Bleu. It's uneven and willfully pretentious, which is half its charm — a punk star discovering Curtis Mayfield and Modern Jazz Quartet in public. “You're the Best Thing” is one of the decade's finest soul ballads.

Before Talk Talk dissolved pop entirely on Spirit of Eden, they made this — 1986's lush, organic, gorgeous The Colour of Spring. Mark Hollis's voice over real instruments breathing in real rooms; “Life's What You Make It” is the hit, but the album is a slow tide. The most sophisticated end of sophisti-pop, one step from inventing post-rock.

Roddy Frame wrote these songs as a teenager, which is faintly unfair. The 1983 debut is jangle and acoustic dazzle shading into the genre's jazzier sophistication — “Oblivious,” “Walk Out to Winter.” Postcard Records precocity grown into something lasting; the bridge between Scottish indie and the glossier sound to come.

The genre at its brightest and most brass-forward. Corinne Drewery's voice over Andy Connell's Northern-soul-meets-jazz arrangements; “Breakout” (1987) is a horn-driven rush of pure uplift, and the rest of It's Better To Travel keeps the standard. Often filed as too pop for the cool kids — which is precisely why it's aged better than its reputation.

A decade before they reinvented as a drum-and-bass act, Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt made hushed, jazz-literate pop. Idlewild (1988) is their warmest — Thorn's contralto over brushed drums and strings, including the standout cover of “I Don't Want to Talk About It.” Bedsit melancholy with conservatoire chops.

The 1985 follow-up that proved Diamond Life was no fluke — “The Sweetest Taboo,” “Is It a Crime,” a band locking into the groove that would carry them for forty years. More confident and a touch darker than the debut. Sade the band (not just Adu) come fully into focus here.

Steely Dan's Walter Becker produced this 1985 record, and it shows — the same precision and harmonic richness, transplanted to Liverpool. “Black Man Ray” and “King in a Catholic Style” are deceptively gentle pop with real craft underneath. An underrated entry the genre's diggers prize.

Glasgow's answer to the form: Ricky Ross writing widescreen songs about a grey city, wrapped in 1987 production that splits the difference between sophisti-pop polish and full-throated soul. “Dignity” is the anthem, but Raintown holds together as a portrait of a place — proof the genre could carry weight as well as gloss.