Track Listing
DISC 1:
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
16. Stalker
17. Genetic
18. Hendrix Necro
19. Destroyed Room, The
DISC 2:
1. Is It My Body?
2. Personality Crisis
3. End of the End of the Ugly, The
4. Tamra
5. Little Jammy Thing - (7" version)
6. Lite Damage - (previously unreleased)
7. Dreamfinger - (previously unreleased)
8. Barracuda - (previously unreleased)
9. New White Kross - (previously unreleased)
10. Guido - (previously unreleased)
11. Stalker - (previously unreleased)
12. Moon Face - (previously unreleased)
13. Poet in the Pit - (previously unreleased)
14. Theoretical Chaos - (previously unreleased)
15. Youth Against Fascism - (previously unreleased)
16. Wish Fulfillment - (previously unreleased)
| Details | | Contributing Artists: | Ian MacKaye | | Producer: | Butch Vig, Sonic Youth | | Distributor: | Universal Distribution | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album 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: Ian MacKaye (guitar).
Audio Mixers: Conrad Uno; Jack Endino; Andy Wallace; Sonic Youth; Wharton Tiers; Butch Vig.
Audio Remixers: Aaron Mullan; Sonic Youth.
Liner Note Author: Byron Coley.
Recording information: Egg Studios, Seattle, WA (1991-1992); Fun City, New York, NY (1991-1992); Magic Shop, New York, NY (1991-1992); SY Hoboken Rehearsal Space (1991-1992).
Photographers: Mika Hashimoto; Stefano Giovannini; Mike Kelley; Enrique Badulescu; Gerhard Yurkovic.
Unknown Contributor Roles: Kim Gordon; Lee Ranaldo; Steve Shelley; Thurston Moore.
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.
While Sonic Youth diehards may complain that 1992's Dirty is the first of their albums to receive the deluxe reissue treatment -- complete with an extra disc of B-sides, unreleased rehearsals and demos, and, of course, liner notes with essays by Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, and Byron Coley, among others -- its place in the band's discography as their (relatively) most commercial, and commercially successful, album makes it a financially savvy starting point and whets the appetite for the eventual Daydream Nation, Sister, Goo, and other reissues that the Dirty deluxe edition will hopefully spawn. The album itself remains one of Sonic Youth's best balances of experimentalism and accessibility, with just enough nods to the grunge/alternative explosion to connect it with that era, but not so many that it sounds dated. "100%," "Drunken Butterfly," and "Youth Against Fascism" -- with their crunching, crushing guitars; upfront drums; and relatively tight song structures -- are as close as the band gets to grunge, but it's grunge that's been filtered through Sonic Youth's arty, detached stance: they never sound as desperately, poetically angry as Nirvana or as rowdy and smart-assed as Mudhoney did. That's not to say that the band doesn't sound passionate on Dirty, however. Actually, the emphasis on pop structures and melodies provides the perfect setting for some of Sonic Youth's most explicitly political statements -- by appearing on an album that was originally released in the twilight of one Bush administration and reissued during another, the aforementioned "Youth Against Fascism" sounds both retro and eerily prescient. The more mainstream approach also allows the band to explore love and lust in surprisingly ...
Editorial Reviews
Included in Q's list of the 50 Best Albums Of 1992.
Q (01/01/1993)
Ranked #8 in the Village Voice's list of the 40 Best Albums Of 1992.
Village Voice (03/02/1993)
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 (01/07/1993)
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 (12/01/1992)
Recommended - ...In an era of reduced expectations, Sonic Youth remains uncompromised--integrity and soul intact...
Spin (09/01/1992)
...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
Entertainment Weekly (08/14/1992)
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...
Rolling Stone (09/03/1992)
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...
Spin (09/01/1992)
...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...
Option (09/01/1992)
...[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...
Stereo Review (12/01/1992)
...DIRTY is all the better for piled-on confusion...
The Wire (05/01/2003)
5 stars out of 5 - ...Crammed with contagious grunge-pop and deafening plectrum-grinding chaos....A must...
Uncut (05/01/2003)
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...
Mojo (03/01/2003)
| See an error? Submit a change request |
![Dirty [Deluxe Edition] by Sonic Youth (CD, Apr-2003, 2 Discs, Geffen Records USA)](http://i18.ebayimg.com/03/c/01/a2/b1/b0_7.JPG "Dirty [Deluxe Edition] by Sonic Youth (CD, Apr-2003, 2 Discs, Geffen Records USA)")
![Dirty [Deluxe Edition] by Sonic Youth (CD, Apr-2003, 2 Discs, Geffen Records USA)](http://i18.ebayimg.com/03/c/01/a2/b1/b0_32.JPG "Dirty [Deluxe Edition] by Sonic Youth (CD, Apr-2003, 2 Discs, Geffen Records USA)")
All rights reserved.
