Dirty

Performer: Sonic Youth
Artist: Ian MacKaye
Engineer: Edward Douglas; Edward Douglas; Andy Wallace; Butch Vig
Producer: Sonic Youth; Butch Vig
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Full title: Dirty (w/ Mike Kelly photograph). Personnel: Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo (vocals, guitars), Kim Gordon (vocals, bass), Steve Shelley (drums). Additional personnel: Ian MacKaye (guitar). Recorded at Magic Shop, New York City. This is a limited edition release containing a Mike Kelly photograph visible through a see-through tinted tray. Includes a bonus disc with additional B-sides and rehearsal tapes. Also includes a 28-page booklet. Sonic Youth: Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley. Additional personnel: Ian MacKaye. Includes liner notes by Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Byron Coley. Producers: Butch Vig, Sonic Youth. Personnel: Thurston Moore (vocals, guitar); Kim Gordon (vocals); Ian MacKaye, Lee Ranaldo (guitar); Steve Shelley (drums). Audio Mixers: Andy Wallace; Butch Vig. Recording information: Magic Shop, New York, NY (1992); Sear Sound, New York, NY (1992). 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.

Rolling Stone (9/3/92, p.63) - 4 Stars - Excellent - "...DIRTY is a great Sonic Youth disc, easily ranking with DAYDREAM NATION [1988] and SISTER [1987] among the band's most unified and unforgettable recorded works...a scorched and scorching whole. DIRTY is a burner..." Spin (12/92, p.67) - Ranked #3 in Spin's list of the 20 Best Albums Of The Year - "...the spectrum of sound and fury unleashed by Sonic Youth is the perfect soundtrack for a generation..." Spin (9/92, p.101) - Recommended - "...In an era of reduced expectations, Sonic Youth remains uncompromised--integrity and soul intact..." Spin (9/92, p.101) - Recommended - "...the new Sonic Youth album rocks...Sonic Youth remains uncompromised--integrity and soul intact...the vocals have never sounded better, nor have the guitars...a wonderful record..." Entertainment Weekly (1/7/93, p.123) - Ranked #1 in Entertainment Weekly's list of the Top 10 Albums Of 1992 - "...Rock & roll--whatever that archaic phrase means in the '90s--simply doesn't get more vital and intense than this..." Entertainment Weekly (8/14/92, p.58) - "...much-needed proof that the old-fangled concept of a rock guitar band can still result in vital, undeniably moving music...every other rock & roll record that visits our planet this year will have a hard time topping [DIRTY]..." - Rating: A Q (1/93, p.72) - Included in Q's list of the 50 Best Albums Of 1992. Uncut (5/03, p.114) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...Crammed with contagious grunge-pop and deafening plectrum-grinding chaos....A must..." The Wire (5/03, p.71) - "...DIRTY is all the better for piled-on confusion..." Option (9-10/92, p.128) - "...as solid and uncompromising an album as Sonic Youth has made...Sonic Youth is already one of the defining bands of its generation, far more significant in terms of their influence and artistic import than bands which far outsell them..." Village Voice (3/2/93, p.5) - Ranked #8 in the Village Voice's list of the 40 Best Albums Of 1992. Stereo Review (12/92, p.104) - "...[a] grunge-pop masterpiece...packs maximum snarl and pummeling dissonance...The fraying fabric and internal contradictions embodied in DIRTY are precisely the point, and Sonic Youth makes it brilliantly..." Mojo (Publisher) (3/03, pp.118-9) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...DIRTY was as close as Sonic Youth would ever come to an orthodox noise: a crisp rockist beast, with all the pro-studio trimmings. It is also compact proof of the rock'n'roll heart that beats inside their fire music..."

Drawing equally from punk rock and new-music pioneers such as John Cage and Glenn Branca (whom guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo both played with), Sonic Youth employed a palette of white noise that deconstructed punk-rock orthodoxy into radical new configurations. Seemingly the opposite of what major labels would want in a band, Sonic Youth inked a deal with Geffen records in the late 1980s and caught the ear of a certain mainstream listenership. With the release of their 16th proper studio album, RATHER RIPPED, in 2006, Sonic Youth secured their position as icons of underground and alternative culture.

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