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Folks, the David Keenan review has arrived and it is mighty favourable:
"Massively-potent archival live set from Sonic Youth, captured straight to four track during the Bad Moon Rising>Evol era: I was a big collector of Sonic Youth live tapes back in the day and my favourite era was definitely the Evol shows in the mid-80s so this set is a spectacular unearthing, capturing the group at a key moment of transition, with Bob Bert vacating the drum stool in favour of Steve Shelley and the group moving from the strung out American gothic of Bad Moon/Death Valley into the tortuous metal drones of Evol. Buncha highlights here: the first half of the opening “Halloween” is missing from the masters so they segue from an audience recording into the master and it works great, like a slow, psychedelic zoom from crude cassette noise into hi-fi drone; Kim’s tracks are uniformly great, with particular highlights being “Brave Men Run”, “Ghost Bitch”, “Brother James”, “Secret Girl” (earliest live recording of that amazing track) and “Flower”; a reminder of what an amazing twin guitar tag team Ranaldo and Moore were, crashing arcs of feedback into each other and playing with the kind higher-mind string relativities of Verlaine and Lloyd in Television; the spectacular run-out jam on “Expressway To Your Skull” which makes explicit just how much of a debt NZ drone owes to this one momentous track; the appearance of “Kat ‘n’ Hat”, a rare/unrecorded gem; the genesis of that eerie tapes/downtuned guitar style that would dominate the live Evol sets, here sounding particularly feral. This is a timely reminder of what an amazing band Sonic Youth were, especially in their pre-Daydream incarnation, and also what a hip period the 80s were in terms of underground guitar action. Back in the day you just hadda be into Sonic Youth, even if you were an indie dud, and listening to this wild avant rock it’s pretty miraculous they were ever so popular, even if most of the kids I knew at the time went for “Starpower” or “Bubblegum” over “Marilyn Moore “ or “Expressway” and breathed a sigh of relief when they finally dropped Daydream Nation. But for me the heroic period of Sonic Youth is probably 84-87 and this fantastic release perfectly captures the revolutionary arc of the times. Been a bunch of killer archival releases this year but this one goes right to the top of the pile. Comes with a download. Highly recommended!" © Volcanic Tongue 2012
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