Update (4/2/2018): With many Drag City releases coming to Spotify this week, we have updated this guide with links to listen there as well, where available.

The experimental artists signed to Drag City have long had the luxury of ignoring music industry trends, and recent years have found the Chicago indie label no less out of step with time than when Dan Koretzky and Dan Osborn started it in 1990. Back in 2013—when album rollouts were blown out to the point of satire, only to be reduced to the point of revolution—let’s not forget that Bill Callahan previewed his new LP of slow, mortality-obsessed folk songs with… a 12” single of dub remixes. So it makes sense that, as streaming services have become the standard platform for indie and major label artists alike, Drag City has kept all of its treasures away from the so-called “bananas of the music industry,” instead nudging its dedicated fanbase towards vinyl releases and paid downloads. That changes this week. Barring a few notable exceptions (like Jim O’Rourke’s solo records), the label’s entire catalog will have made its way to streaming, via Apple Music, by tomorrow. Below, we’ve outlined some crucial starting points for your streaming, whether you want Drag City classics or oddities.

Early Days

Pavement - Westing (By Musket and Sextant) (1993)

The formative days of Pavement are collected on this early Drag City release, compiling several EPs and singles the band issued through the label before moving to Matador with Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. Both Pavement and Drag City would go on to release more compelling statements, but this sloppy sampler offers fascinating insight into what was to come from both parties involved.

Listen on Apple Music and Spotify

Royal Trux - Cats and Dogs (1993)

On their rootsy fourth album, the D.C. noise-rock duo had evolved with genre-busting ambition, offering songs that stood up next to the Stones cuts they irreverently sent up. In some ways, Cats and Dogs set the template for Drag City masterpieces to come: the songs were familiar but their performances felt slightly warped. But looking back, it seems inevitable that Royal Trux would be drafted by the majors for their 1995 follow-up, Thank You.

Listen on Apple Music and Spotify

Hey Drag City Compilation (1994)

While Drag City was home to bands that went on to be considered influential, back in ’94 they were just a bunch of weirdos with guitars. This seminal comp offers just a taste of that strange flavor, from Pavement and Royal Trux to Silver Jews and Smog. And what a song Bill Callahan contributes: the epic “Your Face” is his slow, ominous, and oddly poetic ode to a fake orgasm.

Listen on Apple Music and Spotify

Edith Frost - Calling Over Time (1997)

The first album from Texas singer-songwriter Edith Frost is a stark, haunting character study that captures where Americana was headed at the turn of the century. As with her contemporaries like Will Oldham and Jason Molina, Frost would expand and clean up her sound, most notably on 2001’s expansive Wonder Wonder. But on Calling Over Time, she expressed her idiosyncratic vision of blues, folk, and country using the sparsest arrangements possible, yielding one of the decade’s most captivating debuts.

Listen on Apple Music and Spotify

Classics

Palace Music - Viva Last Blues (1995)

During his first decade at Drag City, Will Oldham—that Louisville mystery man working under a confusing array of monikers—dreamed up a different path for singer-songwriters. Before settling on Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy with his breakthrough 1999 release I See a Darkness, Oldham issued several equally excellent LPs as Palace Music. Viva Last Blues is the best of them: a cozy collection of cryptic, jammy sing-alongs that made every listener feel like they were in on a secret joke.