Sonic Youth’s second major-label album, produced and mixed by Butch Vig and Andy Wallace (a team that had helped turn Nirvana’s NEVERMIND multi-platinum) was not the barefaced bid for mainstream acceptance that surly underground souls grumbled about in the pages of fanzines. While Vig and Wallace give guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, bassist Kim Gordon, and phenomenal drummer Steve Shelley a wide-screen panorama for their bizarrely-tuned assaults, DIRTY is probably Sonic Youth’s most uncompromising album since 1985’s BAD MOON RISING–particularly in the lyrical department.
Dropping the deliberate obscurantism, Philip K. Dick references, and smart-alecky snottiness, Sonic Youth brackets a slew of pointed political attacks (”Youth Against Fascism,” “Swimsuit Issue,” and the Jesse Helms-bashing “Chapel Hill”) with two passionate tributes to the band members’ murdered friend, Joe Cole (”100%” and “JC”). That DIRTY is Sonic Youth’s most commercial-sounding album makes it that much more subversive.

Undoubtedly the most influential American indie group of the late 20th century and beyond, Sonic Youth has seldom wavered in their embrace of underground music and culture even as their move in the 1990s to Geffen brought with it a decidedly more mainstream listenership. While the carefully orchestrated squall and skewed melodicism of late major-label efforts SONIC NURSE (2004) and RATHER RIPPED (2006) marked a dramatic departure from the fiery noise anthems of old, THE ETERNAL, Sonic Youth’s 2009 album for Matador, is a welcome return to a familiar, back-to-basics approach.

On THE ETERNAL, SY sound at once revitalized and limbered by the move back to an indie, with Thurston, Kim, and company revisiting familiar tropes–gales of blistering guitar noise, acerbic power pop riffs, and ruminative spoke-sung recitations–with the sharpened edge of a band wised at their twilight years. While these elder statesmen won’t be kicking up teenage riots anymore, the sassy, punkish opener, “Sacred Trickster,” may be as energetic as any of their anthems circa GOO or DIRTY, with Kim Gordon’s feral come-ons losing none of their evocative power. Meanwhile, the explosive riff-fest, “Poison Arrow,” pairs grinding detuned guitars with sheets of droning feedback in classic SY style.

Tracklisting
1. Sacred Trickster
2. Anti Orgasm
3. Leaky Lifeboat (For Gregory Corso)
4. Antenna
5. What We Know
6. Calming The Snake
7. Poison Arrow
8. Malibu Gas Station
9. Thunderclap For Bobby Pyn
10. No Way
11. Walkin’ Blue
12. Massage The History

Professional Reviews
Spin (p.98) – “THE ETERNAL is the Youth’s best album since 2002’s MURRAY STREET — the riots aren’t teenage anymore, of course, but they’re wisely messy and darker, newly rooted in a heavy hookiness akin to Mudhoney and the Wipers.”

Entertainment Weekly (p.61) – “[A] sort of survey course in SY history, careering from their early art-school atonality to the more melodically sophisticated compositions of later years.”

Alternative Press (p.130) – 4 stars out of 5 — “When bassist Kim Gordon takes the mic, it’s apparent she hasn’t mellowed one iota; when she teams up with Moore, they come off as a street-tough Sonny and Cher.”

Billboard – “[T]he guitar tones have rarely sounded better and new bassist Mark Ibold brings a head-turning articulation to the low end.”

Q (Magazine) (p.124) – 4 stars out of 5 — “[O]pener ‘Sacred Trickster’ is thrillingly focused. Refreshingly, nothing outstays its welcome…”

Paste (magazine) (p.50) – “[T]hey’re fearless in their exploration of what it is to be human. At the end of the day, that’s about the most comforting sentiment you can ask for from a rock ‘n’ roll record.”

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Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation

The double album that brought Sonic Youth to the attention of a wider audience and prompted the eager interest of a handful of major labels. DAYDREAM NATION, with its sleepy single candle flickering silently on the gatefold cover, harnessed their reckless live favourite, “Teenage Riot,” while they ran gloriously roughshod over “Rain King” and “Silver Rocket,” and offered the overtly camp glee of “Trilogy,” which came with parts a, b and c. Their assured ascension to festival billing and the giant Geffen label came as no surprise to anyone who had heard this album.

Tracklisting
1. Teen Age Riot
2. Silver Rocket
3. The Sprawl
4. Cross The Breeze
5. Eric’s Trip
6. Total Trash
7. Hey Toni
8. Providence
9. Candle
10. Rain King
11. Kissability
12. Trilogy: The Wonder / Hyperstation / Eliminator

Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (p.74) – 5 stars out of 5 — “[I]ts tunings keep it honest and its anthems keep it thrilling.”

Rolling Stone (10/89) – 3.5 Stars – Very Good – Ranked #45 in Rolling Stone’s ‘100 Greatest Albums Of The 80s’ survey.

Spin (p.100) – 5 stars out of 5 — “In terms of badass sonics and sentiments, perhaps the greatest art-punk statement ever.”

Spin (1/89, p.67) – “…this music is hitting me right where I live…”

Q (7/96, p.144) – 3 Stars – Good – “…regarded by many as the Youth’s greatest work….DAYDREAM NATION…contain[s] the glorious, Nirvana-predicting ‘Teen Age Riot’…”

Uncut (p.94) – 5 stars out of 5 — “[An] avant-rock masterpiece….If it had been recorded yesterday, DAYDREAM NATION would still sound revolutionary.”

Alternative Press (7/95, p.89) – Rated #51 in AP’s list of the ‘Top 99 Of ‘85-’95′ – “…Sonic Youth’s most focused, fully-realized work. This [is] the document of a band at the height of their powers, distilling every lesson they [have] learned in guitar terrorism, songwriting, rock action, and shattering conventions into a sustained series of electrical shocks…”

CMJ (1/5/04, p.26) – Ranked #20 in CMJ’s “Top 20 Most-Played Albums of 1989″

Down Beat (p.72) – 4.5 stars out of 5 — “Widely hailed as Sonic Youth’s masterpiece….DAYDREAM NATION was a lean, graceful blast of subcultural New York writ large…”

Melody Maker (5/4/96, p.58) – “…The mid-period Sonic LPs, specifically SISTER and DAYDREAM NATION, are generally regarded as their most fully realised…”

Kerrang (Magazine) (p.50) – “[The album] opened the floodgates for acolytes such as Nirvana….You can practically hear the ’90s being invented…”

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Sonic Youth – The Eternal