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Sonic Youth
Dirty
Sonic Youth:  Dirty Tell a Friend about this album

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Album Review

Released: 1992
Label: Geffen
Selection #: 182486
Downtown New York's finest noise band on 100%, Swimsuit Issue, Sugar Kane, Drunken Butterfly, Shoot, Purr, Youth Against Fascism, Wish Fulfillment, more.
Listen RM WM
1 100%
2 Swimsuit Issue
3 Theresa's Sound World
4 Drunken Butterfly
5 Shoot
6 Wish Fulfillment
7 Sugar Kane
8 Orange Rolls, Angel's Spit
9 Youth Against Fascism
10 Nic Fit
11 On the Strip
12 Chapel Hill
13 JC
14 Purr
15 Créme Brûlèe
  
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Album Review

When DGC Records signed Nirvana in 1991, one of DGC's A&R reps expressed the opinion that, with plenty of touring and the right promotion, the new act might sell as well as its labelmate and touring partner Sonic Youth. The surprise success of "Nevermind" upended previous commercial expectations for Sonic Youth (among other established alternative rock bands), and when "Dirty" was released in 1992, it was seen by many as the band's big move toward the grunge market. Which doesn't make a lot of sense if you actually listen to the album; while Butch Vig's clean but full-bodied production certainly gave Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo's guitars greater punch and presence than they had in the past, and many of the songs move in the increasingly tuneful direction the band had been traveling with "Daydream Nation" and "Goo", most of "Dirty" is good bit more jagged and purposefully discordant than its immediate precursors, lacking the same hallucinatory grace as "Daydream Nation" or the hard rock sheen of "Goo". If anything, "Dirty" finds Sonic Youth revisiting the territory the band mapped out on "Sister" -- merging the propulsive structures of rock (both punk and otherwise) with the gorgeous chaos of their approach to the electric guitar -- and it shows how much better they'd gotten at it in the past five years, from the curiously beautiful "Wish Fulfillment" and "Theresa'S Sound World" to the brutal "Drunken Butterfly" and "Purr." "Dirty" was also Sonic Youth's most overtly political album, railing against the abuses of the Reagan/Bush era on "Youth Against Fascism," "Swimsuit Issue," and "Chapel Hill," a surprising move from a band so often in love with cryptic irony. Heard today, "Dirty" doesn't sound like a masterpiece (like "Daydream Nation") or a gesture toward the mainstream audience (like "Goo") -- it just sounds like a damn good rock album, and on those terms it ranks with Sonic Youth's best work. ~ Mark Deming, All Music Guide

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