Best Sonic Youth Studio Album

Sister

Maybe only because it was my first Sonic Youth album. I was eleven-years-old. It was completely mind blowing. By the end of side a, I'd really learned that there are no rules.

EVOL, people, the answer is EVOL. From the first split second that "Tom Violence" commences, you're on an unstoppable train to change.

Sister was rather f*cking excellent too though, mind you.

I'll be conservative and go with Daydream Nation.

"We wanted to give the listener something personal... so we gave 'em our sister"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Whitey_Album ?

i think nobody did this poll before,cause the answer is quite obv.

my answer would have been sister until about two years ago when i rediscovered EVOL. the perfect blend of noise and pretty. Star power baby!

Lately all I want to listen to by them is Rather Ripped, so that's it.

I'll be radical and vote for Daydream Nation.

I'll probably be the only one voting for Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star and I feel fine.

Daydream Nation. I hope this will win!

I'll vote for the self-titled one, as it's kind of the only one I can stand these days. Me from fifteen years ago insists that it's a death match between Evol and Sister. Contrarian me says it's actually Bad Moon Rising, 'cause that one is formally the most out there and I do miss the between-song stuff...wish they'd continued to mess w/that.

1. Sister
2. Confusion Is Sex
3. Bad Moon Rising
4. Evol
5. Sonic Youth
6. Daydream Nation

(The 2nd through 6th positions are all pretty close, and on a different day I might list them completely differently. 1st Place was very easy, though.)

But what is "Made In USA" again?

noodley marijuana-fueled film soundtrack

thought I was the only fan of albums #1 and 2, cool.

xhuck: it's that soundtrack thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_USA_%28album%29

xhuxk (sorry)

my top five would probably be: Daydream, EVOL, Murray Street, Sister, Jet Set. but I voted for Murray Street just to kind of stump for the tentpole best album of their later years.

wtf @ this poll including SYR5 (which only one member of Sonic Youth even played on!) and not any of the first three SYR's. honestly I probably wouldn't have included any of them, although a best SYR poll might be interesting.

I'd vote for The Whitey Album just (if it were a choice) because Watt's on it, but I'm going for EVOL, with Daydream Nation a close second.

I love Watt, too, but that's such an arbitrary reason to vote for an SY album. he's on EVOL too anyway!

Made In USA is basically just snippets of Secret Girl off EVOL and random noise, it's not really that interesting.

I went for Sister, but EVOL and Bad Moon Rising are close. I never really rated Daydream Nation as highly as any of those.

I love Watt, too, but that's such an arbitrary reason to vote for an SY album.

Yeah, that's true, but when it comes to picking the best out of an excellent bunch, the reasons to differentiate between them become arbitrary, no? Besides, I like Watt.

he's on EVOL too anyway!

Only slightly, only slightly.

BAD MOON RISING, hands down. Confusion is Sex is my runner-up.

Rather Ripped totally sucks and is (along with Dirty) the worst thing they've ever done.

Bad Moon Rising. It's not better than the three albums that followed it craftwise, but it has a fresher spirit.

Murray Street, because it's the only *album* of theirs I find myself wanting to listen to these days. O/w good playlists will do.

My favorite is Sister, but Washing Machine and Daydream Nation come close.

I wonder if I'll be the only Goo voter.

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drc400/c481/c48151ibcc8.jpg

Schizophrenia, Tuff Gnarl, Pacific Coast Highway, and Kotton Krown are among my all-time SY favorites, but I love the whole album. I am surprised at what an easy call this was for me. I think EVOL might be my second pick.

I suspect there'll be more Goo votes to come. xpost.

My best guess is that the Goo fans are all busy reading REM threads right now, but will discover this one in a year or two.

Which ever one has the fewest Kim Gordon songs.

completely OTM Jeff

1. Bad Moon Rising
2. EVOL
3. Sister

Haven't listened to any of the others more than once in the last decade.

I'd just like to post the lyrics to My Friend Goo. Always cracks me up.

my friend Goo has a real tattoo
she always knows just what to do
she looks through her hair like she doesn't care (?)
what she does best is stand and stare

she can play the drums set too
and the boys say: "hey Goo what's new?"' hey Goo what's new?
my friend Goo just says: "Hey you"
my friend Goo just says: "Hey you"

I know a secret or two about Goo
she won't mind if I tell you
she likes to wear green underwear
and lays down almost anywhere

she doesn't have nothing to do
and the boys say: "hey Goo what's new?"' hey Goo what's new?
my friend Goo just says: "Hey you"
my friend Goo just says: "Hey you"

I know a secret or two about Goo
she won't mind if i tell you
I know a secret or two about Goo
I know a secret about Goo and you

and she sticks just like glue
and the boys say: "hey Goo what's new?"' hey Goo what's new?
my friend Goo just goes: "Hey you"
my friend Goo just goes: "Hey you"

Goo Goo Goo

Goo Goo Goo

Goo Goo Goo
my friend Goo
Goo Goo Goo
talkin' 'bout Goo
Goo Goo Goo
my friend Goo
Goo Goo Goo
you would too
Goo

'Baboons Writhing' pwns.

Sister. Schizophrenia is the best song they ever wrote.

I am almost certain Daydream Nation is my least favorite, though I haven't really heard any of the 2000's ones except Rather Ripped, which is quite good.

murray street is pretty awesome

Another vote for Sister here

Funny how almost everyone who voted for Sister calls EVOL their #2 and vice versa

Goody goody goody! Sonic Youth comes to ILX Poll-Land! :) :)

Dirty Dirty Dirty Dirty. Although I haven't heard Sister in a real long time...in fact, I think I still have it on tape...*goes into other room*

Sister and Evol made for the very best two sides of a tape.

Unfortunately I let Evol go...or rather never had it. Bought it for a friend in England, sent it to him...never owned it myself. A tragedy, I know. So much music, so little time.

Okay I just went to the store and bought Sister (my old tape didn't have very good sound quality to be honest), Evol & the Deluxe edition of Dirty. I hope you're happy now. I almost bought the Deluxe edition of Goo, but one would like to save some money now and then for other things.

Bad Moon Rising. All these years I thought I was the only one. "Brave Men Run" might be the greatest opener ever.

I've been listening to "Unmade Bed" for the past half hour...I don't think it's their best album, but Sonic Nurse has some amazing tracks.

bad moon rising

Unmade Bed is the best song they have ever written. Alot of tracks they have written are just insanley brilliant;Schizophrenia, tuff gnarl, skip tracer, I'm insane, free city Rhymes, Karen Koltrane, etc...the not so obvious ones are usually better than lets say teenage riot or 100%.

oh yeah, by the way...Sister pwns.

I vote Sissy.

I just want to thank ILM, really. I honestly needed someone to kick me in the pants and say "buy Evol and Sister now" even though it never would have occured to me to do that by myself for some reason. I gotta say, Evol sounds really, really fascinating to me. I really wouldn't have bothered with this stuff when it came out, though I liked the video for "Shadow Of A Doubt". Yeah I just didn't trust them at all back then.

Also, if Daydream Nation wins this poll, I'm really going to be upset.

Another vote for Sister. The first of them I heard back then. "Schizophrenia" still gives me the chills. That intro is unbelievable - so simple, so effective.

or maybe they just couldn't be arsed posting.

I stand by my EVOL vote tho, in fact I think I shall get out my vinyl tonight and listen to it.

Evol was my favourite album ever once but now it doesn't hold up as well for me as Sister does. "Green Light"/"Death to Our Friends"/"Secret Girl" are really great and creepy-pretty like they should be but parts of it feel a bit enervated. Sister moves more. The sound (lo-fi approximation of 80s production values?) seems a bit off. Even "Expressway" drags a bit. I don't know if it's just that I've heard more ambient guitar music or if it's that I just played the album to death from 16-23.

I think "Schizophrenia" is the best thing they've done. Is it the catchiest song that has no recurring sections at all? I think Sister maximizes their strengths within the form of creatively structured songs that have memorable tunes and beats. Sonic Nurse might be my 2nd choice!

I have to admit too my choices were biased by not having heard most of their catalogue post-Goo. Which I didnt like that much. I only have Murray St apart from the early work and I like it a lot.

On some days this could be my list except for Goo and Rather Ripped (wtf?).

i always loved made in usa. it's a fine soundtrack.

I just relistened to Sister tonite and it is pretty awesome.

ILM in not wrong shocka!

Yeah I think this poll came out pretty right on.

Awesome!

i'm glad murray got 9 votes

album is great

'NYC Ghosts and Flowers is still thought of too poorly. It and 'Murray St.' go well together. 'Rather Ripped' is dreadful.

Sonic Nurse was robbed.....

I'm still not really understanding how Sister is better than EVOL. EVOL just keeps me more entertained throughout, whereas I always recall getting bored with Sister about halfway through. But I'm going to continue to scrutinize it and see if I come to a different conclusion eventually.

Sonic Nurse is absolutely fantastic, gorgeous, complex, mind-blowing and the overall best release they've done since Daydream Nation in my book and probably many others

Well I just can't thank gman enough for starting this thread, for my eyes have been opened. I listened to Bad Moon Rising again and decided it still absolutely floored me, so I figured I should go ahead and check out whatever they did before that. I've avoided early Sonic Youth for years and years because I always assumed it would be way too noisy for me. But Bad Moon Rising poked some major holes in my expectations. So I got the self-titled CD and put it on my CD walkman and walked around the city and felt like I was in another world. I just couldn't believe they ever sounded like that, so spine-chillingly eerie and dark. It seemed to dovetail nicely with my favourite type of sound from that era, but I just didn't expect it from *them*. So what did I do? I walked right back to the CD store and bought Confusion Is Sex and put THAT on. Well I didn't like it quite as much, but the atmosphere of it was dead on, and I began to see the connection between them and Swans in those days which I'd never given any thought to before. Holy christ, Michael Gira even wrote the lyrics to one song? Wow.

I am dismayed, though, that so many seem to see Sister/Daydream Nation as their highest point. For me those two albums are the low point between Goo & Dirty on one side (both of which I love) and this exciting early stuff on the other side.

It is a joy to try taking a look at their entire career like this. I feel like they've just snuck up on me again like they did in '91. Ever present, and I always come back to them, but somehow I never give them the thought I now believe they really deserve.

I shall have to try catching up with their more recent records again. Sonic Nurse will be first on the agenda since that's the one I haven't heard yet at all.

Is it healthy to just listen to one band all day and night? Maybe not, but I'm always happiest when I finally find something to be obsessed with. I've found my thrill.

Maybe Evol/Sister/Daydream Nation will sneak up on you someday, just like their early stuff did.

Although it's hard to imagine DN sneaking around.

Oh no, you misunderstand: I'm all on board with EVOL, don't get me wrong. I include that with their "early stuff" see. Not sure if I like it as much as the early early stuff, but that's only because I haven't played it in a week and I plan to revisit soon. No, it's like Sister and Daydream N. are the enemies for me. Which is a shame because the first two songs on Sister are certainly some of the best the band has to offer, and the first oh...6-8 songs on Daydream are pretty fantastic too. But there's a thing called petering out and at least on Goo they waited til like the last three songs on the album to do so.

Also I didn't mean to inadvertently insult "Beauty Lies In The Eye" (I forgot about that one for a moment) but I do believe "Shadow Of A Doubt" is the same kind of thing done much better.

Is it just me or is "Satan Is Boring" rather prescient considering a certain dumbya? Oh well, good stoner music, anyway.

Did you know there's a full moon in Capricorn right now? I saw it in the sky and thought "Bad Moon Rising" hahahah it was really huge in the sky and seemed really close to the horizon, it was weird. Never seen anything like it. I mean, I'd never seen the moon be that huge before.

Bimb: I love "Beauty Lies in the Eye" and "Shadow of a Doubt"! They are some of the few Kim songs I like. Along with "Tunic". I'm usually a Lee fan to be honest.

I think also there has been a bad moon over this entire year but thats a story for some other time

one of the reasons I love <I>Sonic Nurse</I> so much is that Kim has never sounded better.

Will take note, Matos! Thanks.

I just found my old VHS cassette of a Snub episode circa '87 of Sonic Youth live with Iggy Pop on stage doing "I Wanna Be Your Dog"...I'd forgotten that this clip had Iggy in it, too. It was the first time I'd heard the song, and though I wasn't a big fan of SY, I knew it was quite good even then. I hope this clip is on You Tube, but right now I can't be arsed to search for it.

I remember "I wanna be your dog", must still have it on tape somewhere, slowly disintegrating. Never saw the footage, though.

Funny, this morning I'm listening to Sister and Evol, the latters nearly finished. Wanted to check this thread and it's right there at the top of the new answers page! Anyway, just reading Bimble's comments above and I have to say, when Sister was playing earlier, I too felt that the adrenaline rush that was definately going on during the first half was slowly fading by the time "Tuff Gnarl" came on. 17 year old me loved "Hot Wire My Heart" but apart from the terrific intro it doesn't seem to do much for me this time round. But then "Cotton Crown" and "White Cross" came and everything was ok again... Now, on Evol the suspense/adrenaline levels never drop. I feel like I should now decide that it's the better album but I somehow have a hard time doing so! Parting is such...

17? 15 year old me it was. Though I still loved the song at 17.

Also, listening obsessively to one band exclusively is surely not an unhealthy thing to do? I have those phases from time to time, listening to nothing other than Bowie, Sonic, Feelies, Galaxie 500 etc... Reliving/stuck in the past? Maybe. But it always feels really good :)

Yeah seriously, unless I've found a certain band, (or perhaps song I guess) to be obsessed with, I'm not happy. I've managed to settle on Sonic Youth and Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation. I'm happy. I think the last band I was obsessed with was Bow Wow Wow, but that was like 2 years ago.

Also yes, Trayce, the Karen Carpenter song ("Tunic") is a killer, you are right about that. I played that tonight before you posted about it and it just stuns me every time, that song.

I shall play "White Cross" one more time for you, willem.

The Ciccone Youth version of "Addicted To Love" is absolutely hilarious.

It is terrible. I'm not at all a fan of most of Kim's singing.

Well, okay...so she can't exactly keep on key if she had to in a live setting. Neither could Madonna.

I've had this thing in my head for days...this guitar instrumental bit that I thought was at the end of Schizophrenia, but I've figured out now that it actually comes from Dirty Boots. I have not been able to get this thing out of my head for days. It's just this little guitar part. Argh.

All of this pales in comparison to their first EP, though.

I rented some old Sonic Youth videos from the shop along with the 1991:The Year Punk Broke Thing. The guy behind the counter stared at me for the longest time, it was scary. Like he thought I was going to steal the whole lot. Finally he spoke and asked me if I was okay with the deposits on them. "Sure" I said, happily. But for a moment there, I thought might be arrested for renting some old Sonic Youth videos.

Yeah, it's whatever happens just at the end of Dirty Boots when they've gone on a solo freakout. Whatever that is, I can't get it out of my head.

Okay Sonic Nurse is next I swear, but after long deliberations, I have concluded the first Sonic Youth EP + bonus early live stuff on the CD is just about as good as it gets with them. I want to change my vote (again). That stuff is just unassailable. "The Burning Spear", "The Good & The Bad"...lord it's enough to make a fan of early PIL happy at times.

after playing each of them. i really feel ILM was dead on putting sister over evol

im really loving 'pacific coast highway'

i think its the only song sung by kim that i really like besides 'Sympathy For The Strawb' . any suggestions for sonic youth songs with her on vocals?

Nurse has the only Kim songs I've ever really liked without reservations or qualifiers--
"Pattern Recognition" & "I Love You Golden Blue"... "Turquoise Boy" off Rather Ripped I'd add as well. I think I prefer Kim the Balladeer to Kim the Street Beat Ranter.

I love the Kim songs on Washing Machine, but they're really Kim the grunty angst muffin or Kim the Street Beat Ranter or Kim the Shangri-Las wannabe rather than Kim the Balladeer, so if it's the latter that floats your boat gman go with Sparkle Motion's recommendations.

Ok, I forgot Washing Machine--Becuz is teriffic, but I reject categorically Kim the Shangri-Las Wannabe.
I would add that based on your definition, the Kim of Pattern Recognition is of Grunty Angst Muffin vintage.

Ive just realised that further upthread I big upped "Pacific Coast Highway" but I did what I always do, and confused it with "In the Kingdom #19". POssibly because its about a car crash. But its an awesome cinematic storysong.

Aaaah
he did what he had to do
he asked no questions
he had few conversations
the tar glistens in the noon heat
he tread across the grass, up onto, and down off of, the concrete abutments

mirage on the highway
ghosts in the tunnel
the dark cave

out into the blinding light of day at breakneck speed
every bolt rumbling

glistening highway mirage groans
the slick surface
careening into first the small mammal, and then screeching along the guard
rail, scraping paint and throwing sparks like sheets of pure terror for
400 yards
over and over

with one final back and forth rocking motion coming to rest
wheeehah

the beautiful paintjob hopelessly marred

Fucking awesome.

Come on get in the car
Lets go for a ride somewhere
I won't hurt you
As much as you hurt me
Let me take you there
Before the sun goes down
Come on give me your love
Comon baby all you have
I wanna take your breathe away
Comon baby
Just like that, you say
You make me feel so crazy
Comon get in the car
Lets go for a ride somewhere
I won't hurt you
You make me feel so crazy

Come on get in the car
Lets go for a ride somewhere
I won't hurt you
As much as you hurt me
Let me take you there
Before the sun goes down
Come on give me your love
Comon baby all you have
I wanna take your breathe away
Comon baby
Just like that, you say
You make me feel so crazy
Comon get in the car
Lets go for a ride somewhere
You make me feel so good
You make me feel so crazy

has to be one of the best she has ever done if not the best

1. Goo. I'm surprised to realize I actually think this, but there it is. I was HUGELY into it when it came out and I still really enjoy most of it.
2. Sonic Nurse, because I'm not sick of it yet, and "New Hampshire"
3.-4. Sister/EVOL (tie)
5. Everything else (tie), except for
6. Dirty
7. Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star. I just can't get into it at all.

Actually, for all the bad press Dirty got, prolley my favourite Kim song (besides Cross the Breeze) is JC. Absolutely spifferiffical! (tho def. spacy beatnik-rapping

)

A Thousand Leaves (1998) 6

6 voters (including myself) otm ^^

I'd rank it fourth, I think.

Hmm, why not. More or less in order of preference:

Sister (1987) 36
Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star (1994) 4
Daydream Nation (1988) 35
A Thousand Leaves (1998) 6
NYC Ghosts & Flowers (2000) 0
Rather Ripped (2006) 4
Goo (1990) 7
Sonic Nurse (2004) 6
Dirty (1992) 4
Washing Machine (1995) 7
EVOL (1986) 15
Confusion Is Sex (1983) 3
Murray Street (2002) 9
Sonic Youth (1982) 2
Bad Moon Rising (1985) 9

I never get tired of talking about Sonic Youth.

Why would anyone have bad moon rising last?