Washing Machine gets my vote because I am choosing to ignore/exclude Goo from the choices.

My first SY record was EJSTNS so that holds a special place in my heart but I lately have been digging Rather Ripped and at this point it probably is the one I play the most.

Five or six of these (Goo, Dirty, Washing Machine, Thousand Leaves, Nurse, Murray Street) are among my favourite records by anybody. I genuinely have no clue how much time I've spent with them: lots and lots and lots! Murray Street is my favourite of their records for travelling with - lost and alone in my car in the dark with 'Karen Revisited' was a peak experience, and the whole thing is assured and poised without an instant of complacency. Nurse, on the other hand, has 'I Love You Golden Blue', which fucks me right up every time I hear it. And I've always deeply admired the perversity of how 'Pattern Recognition' both opens the record and ends like it's trying to burn every song that follows right off the plastic. And Jim's on it, and no-one else has picked it. So Nurse it is.

Not a fan of The Eternal, but... and I never heard it until today, and It actually came out in 2011, but SYR 9, the instrumental OST to Simon Werner (a French movie I've never heard of) , and supposedly the final thing they ever recorded, is a fitting low-key send off. Lots of classic-SY sounding grooves on this one.

I need to listen to more if their 00s stuff as they dropped off my radar after "A Thousand Leaves". I see they're putting tons of live recordings up for download on their Bandcamp page now - guess they're following the Grateful Dead's example.

Dirty is my favorite of theirs, and one of my faves period. Was really into Murray St when it came out. Production-wise, Jim O'Rourke's work on the latter is more to my taste than the (relatively) big and shiny sound on Dirty, BUT: Andy Wallace's mixes are very entertaining and fun to listen to. Like all good drummers, Steve Shelley loves doing a simple snare flam for a fill, and Wallace sure loved sending all of them to the extra big reverb.

I'm going to say Dirty because Swimsuit Issue is on it.

Dirty has Theresa's sound world and Wish Fulfillment, two of my faves ever.

The rest is so boring methinks.

Well Goo, obviously. I remember my friends and me uneasily putting the cassette in, hoping that signing with a major wouldn't turn one of our favorite bands into sellout poseurs. A couple minutes into Dirty Boots we were all smiles.

Dirty was also great but I thought Experimental Jet Set was crap and stopped listening for a few years. NYC Ghosts And Flowers brought me back around. Of their later stuff, Murray Street is probably my favorite.

Murray Street. It may not be a wild no wave or 1980s SST record, but it is one that I would expect for a good record to be made by an band of that ilk who were around for decades at that point. It's a perfect alt-rock record.

A Thousand Leaves is a pretty close second. It might be Ranaldo's "Karen" songs that I like so much.