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Originally Posted by Murmer99
yeah shortly after I posted that I realized it sounded like I was contradicting myself. However, I meant as a collective whole... if you listen to it from beginning to end, it's fun but not nearly as critical or compelling as say Bad Moon Rising, Sister, EVOL, or Confusion in my opinion. I haven't been able to wrap my mind around this yet, but for whatever reason I generally seem to be unimpressed by most of their work after Daydream Nation. And again, this doesn't mean I think it's bad... just not as important to me. In the 80s they were firing out innovative ideas and all of a sudden they got mixed up in the whole "grunge" thing that I simply never dug. After that, they became more um... "mellow" when they were making the transition from EJSTANS (which I actually think is excellent) to Washing Machine and that's where the bands' inconsistency started for me. I'm not going to go over each one since there's too many and no one will give a single shit, but there you go. I don't really think it's cool to think the way I do about music. In fact, I'm not even sure if there's anyone on this board who'd agree with any of what I said. "To each his own" precisely... there are lots of differences in opinion here and I think it makes conversation a bit more interesting as opposed to everyone agreeing with everything. As Sway already said though... I don't see how Goo and/or Dirty are cornerstones for Sonic Youth. I don't mind them but to me they've always been near the bottom of the list.
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SY's attempt at grunge,
Dirty, was an experiment that produced one of the eras most dynamic and rocking records. As discussed in
Goodbye 20th Century, SY had to rev up their sound so as not to be blown off the stage by the bands they were touring with in the early 90's (Nirvana, Mudhoney, Babes in Toyland, etc). But of course they did it a very SY way. All of the base SY elements remain in tact...they just put an extra charge in the music, which for me works brilliantly. Songs like 'Chapel Hill' and 'Purr' show the band in tight, hard-rocking form. I'll take the
Goo/Dirty "grunge" era to the
A Thousand Leaves/New York City Ghosts & Flowers "beat poet" era one hundred out of one hundred times. I posted this in another thread, but here's how I generally rate SY's catalog...
Sonic Youth - 6/10
Confusion Is Sex + Kill Your Idols - 8/10
Bad Moon Rising - 7/10
Evol - 9/10
Sister - 10/10
Daydream Nation - 10/10
Goo - 8/10
Dirty - 9/10
Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star - 7/10
Washing Machine - 9/10
A Thousand Leaves - 6/10
New York City Ghosts & Flowers - 5/10
Murray Street - 9/10
Sonic Nurse - 8/10
Rather Ripped - 7/10
The Eternal - 7/10
The Whitey Album - 7/10