I will say I like "Gardening at Night" a bit more off "Chronic Town", and there are a couple of songs on "Murmur" that stand up to the debut EP.

Murmur, Reckoning, Fables and Automatic are all easily better than Chronic Town which is the definition of twee, trying-too-hard artsy pop. Document is probably better too. You have to go all the way to Green or Out of Time before you find a song as insufferable as Gardening at Night, and even Out of Time has better songs than anything on CT. Their best album is Fables, CT is one of their worst (tho I stopped listening after Up).

There's no accounting for taste. I'd agree that Reckoning and Fables of the Reconstruction are the core of the ouvre, but Chronic Town and Murmur have the sense of art students melding their post-punk (they were huge Gang of Four fans) and folk-rock influences. Right up there with Pylon.