Dirty

Description

Sonic Youths second major-label album, produced and mixed by Butch Vig and Andy Wallace (a team that had helped turn Nirvanas 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, 1992s Dirty is probably Sonic Youths most uncompromising album since 1985s 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 Youths most commercial-sounding album makes it that much more subversive.