Good one.
For most of my life I would have said Who’s Next, but for the last 10 years or so I’ve said Quadrophenia.
I like Brothers in Arms, but it’s probably my least favorite Dire Straits album. Making Movies is my favorite, although “Telegraph Road” by itself is almost enough to put Love Over Gold over the top.
I’ll add:
Lou Reed-New York
Frank Zappa- Hot Rats
Frank Zappa - Roxy and Elsewhere
Sarah Brightman - Time To Say Goodbye
Good one, I love the album and think that it’s definitely Lou Reed’s best solo album, even better than “Transformer”.
I consider it the best album of that decade.
And it captures that decade so well.
Tori Amos - “Little Earthquakes”
Alan Parsons Project - “Eye in the Sky”
It’s surprising to me to see the Fall mentioned, and twice at that.
Of course, you’re both wrong, it’s Hex Enduction Hour.
And:
for The Smiths, it’s Meat Is Murder
for Cocteau Twins, it’s Treasure
for Dead Can Dance, it’s Aion
for Depeche Mode, it’s Music for the Masses (Blue Vinyl edition)
for My Bloody Valentine, it’s Isn’t Anything
for Nick Cave, it’s Tender Prey
for Siouxsie and the Banshees, it’s Juju
for PIL it’s Happy?
for Einsturzende Neubauten, it’s ½ Mensch
for Taylor Swift, it’s Folklore
Lots of favorite artists for whom I can’t ID the one album that stands out above the others. Even so:
Dr. John - Gris-Gris
The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St. (Let It Bleed and Some Girls are, to my ear, clear second- and third-place entries, although I don’t know in which order, but Exile to me stands out, overall, as the most cohesive album from start to finish.)
Charles Mingus - The Black Saint & The Sinner Lady
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew
Led Zeppelin - Presence (This one might go against the grain, but whatever)
Roxy Music - s/t
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme
For me, that barely makes fourth, with “…Thrill”, “Aja” and “Countdown to Ecstasy” ahead of it.
Oh come on - there’s at least seven or eight better albums he did than that. 
Yeah, a good four-album tie for them, with maybe “Duke” just barely ekeing out on top.
Manoman this guy put out so many fantastic albums - maybe a five- or six-way tie for that guy (with no ekers)
Frank Zappa - will have to be a tie with “One Size Fits All” and “Sheik Yerbouti”
Lou Reed - The Blue Mask (by miles)
Been meaning (ha! for decades now!) to get around to listening to that one. (gotta sneak in “Live at the Witch Trials” while I’m at it, here)
Pixies - Surfer Rosa
Slint - Spiderland (sure, they put out only two full-length albums, but that one was so fantastic and so utterly seminal that it bore mentioning)
Kiss: Alive!
ELP: Brain Salad Surgery.
Thanks for reminding me of that album. It’s fantastic. I went on a post rock binge three or four years ago, I hadn’t heard much of the genre but became curious via the later works of Talk Talk and the band Mogwai, so I read the articles on the genre on wikipedia and allmusic.com and thus discovered Slint and their pioneering influence.
Larry Carlton makes Scam go to the top of the list for me.
Again agree strongly.
Will have to do a three-way tie for Yes’s “Yes Album”, “Fragile” and “Close to the Edge”. Apart from me being probably the biggest Bill Bruford fan on this messageboard, I just couldn’t, for the life of me, get into any their other stuff, like, at all, other than the song “Tempus Fugit” off Drama (which I think just rocks silly).
Indeed, a great guitarist, despite me being more partial to Baxter/Dias.
I was thinking that it would be Selling England By the Pound but a couple albums before and after (c1972 - 1974) should be in the running.
Hard to see Duke as such an album because whatever you think of Genesis without Peter Gabriel or Steve Hackett, it must be recognized that any “outstanding” album of Genesis would be from the classic line-up era (Banks, Collins, Gabriel, Hackett, Rutherford).
ETA: Has this thread morphed into a “favorite album” thread rather than the “outstanding album” as described in the OP?
One word: Foxtrot.
Yes.
Or, Selling England. It’s kinda down to those two, IMO, but no one album was really the sort of “outstanding” as defined by the OP.
It has, sadly, to its detriment.