Track Listing

1. (She's In A) Bad Mood
2. Protect Me You
3. Freezer Burn/ I Wanna Be Your Dog
4. Shaking Hell
5. Inhuman
6. The World Looks Red
7. Confusion Is Next
8. Making The Nature Scene
9. Lee Is Free
10. Kill Yr. Idols
11. Brother James
12. Early American
13. Shaking Hell

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16395 in Music
• Released on: 2005-11-07
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .21 pounds
• Running time: 51 minutes

CD Description
Combining Sonic Youth's first full-length release, 1983's CONFUSION IS SEX, with its followup EP, KILL YR IDOLS, this disc shows the New York noise-guitar quartet at their most uncompromising. Where 1982's self-titled EP sounded timid and too beholden to guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo's mentor, composer Glenn Branca, these two releases combine Branca's methods--including bizarre tunings and guitars attacked with screwdrivers, vibrators and other implements.
These techniques are juxtaposed with sloppy punk rock, as demonstrated by the cacophonous opener "She's In A Bad Mood" and a startling deconstruction of the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog". The mood on KILL YR IDOLS is even darker and more claustrophobic, from the title track's attack on Village Voice critic Robert Christgau to the appropriately-titled "Shaking Hell". Heard in retrospect, it's clear that these two records contain the inspirational seeds for much of the '80s and 90's alternative scene that followed in the wake of Sonic Youth's innovations.

Customer Reviews

The start of something wonderful...
This is crazy, harsh, difficult music, let's get that clear from the start, but you didn't expect anything else, did you? Within SY's back catalogue, musically this album isn't essential. SY had yet to discover the huge palette of guitar sounds they now have at their command, and their songwriting skills were far from honed to perfection, but try to imagine it's 1982, and SY have not released anything yet. The anger & visceral noise pointing out that there is a band ready to assume the mantle of the Velvet Underground and the Stooges. The music itself was important at the time, maybe less so now as SY have gone on to greater things, but this album is effectively a landmark.

challenging, groundbreaking, essential
I have to disagree with the previous reviewer. As a MASSIVE lifelong SY fan, I am beginning to think this is their best record. It is a brilliant achievement. Remember that Lydia Lunch quote about SY "how do you sculpt a hurricane into sound?" This is what she was talking about. Sure, it is more atonal, more abrasive, more uncomfortable and more serious than any of their other work. There's no goofy ironic pissing about here, as would come later. This is SY carrying on the NYC art rock lineage - Velvets, the new wave and No Wave - and taking it somewhere else entirely.

When you put on the CD you will enter a domain of extreme emotional expression, the music rocks in a different way, with a different palate of gtr soundz. This is so much more exciting and interesting than any other No Wave stuff I have heard, with the exception of one Red Transistor song I heard in 93 and never again...

Just to pick out a few ultra-highlights: (She's in a) Bad Mood - the opening track - is itself a cosmic voyage, a cathartic trip. Shaking Hell starts out as the classic "subway train groove" before morphing into a dread symphony. Inhuman and Kill Yr Idols - both total killer rocker classics in my book.

How wonderful that a major label is putting this out! Ha!

the sound of nightmares
dischordant, atonal, fuzzy.... truely unique. ive honestly had nightmares with these songs playing in my head.