The only thing I have by them is Secret Name, the album they did with Steve Albini, and it's a fucking excellent record. Great acoustics, very real world & edgy.
True story - about 4 years ago I was listening to Secret Name on headphones in bed before sleep, and that night I had an amazing, vivid dream about a big derelict factory in the midwest which was haunted by the ghosts of students who worked nights there in the early 60s to pay for college, and they sang songs about the factory & the lives they never led (which were the songs from secret name, rewritten by my subconscious). It wasnt clear if they were actually dead, or if this was the ghost of thier young selves mourning lost possibilities in their own lives and in america generally. One of the eeriest, most evocative dreams I've ever had.
I really associate Secret Name with midwest childhoods - I listened to it a lot when I read The Corrections, and I read Middlesex by Geoffrey Eugenides recently and found myself putting it on again.
But I'm interested that they did Things We Lost... for Don't Look Back - so is it the general critical consensus that it's their best album, or maybe just the best known?