Sonic Youth: EVOL [GOOFIN']

Why you'll love it

This remastered reissue on the band's own Goofin' label includes a lyric insert and a download card with the bonus track "Bubblegum." Pitchfork placed EVOL at No. 31 on its list of the top 100 albums of the 1980s.

This edition

• Remastered
• Lyric insert
• Download card with bonus track

About the album

New drummer, new label, new sound. EVOL was Sonic Youth's first album on SST and the first with Steve Shelley, whose steady, nimble drumming helped steer the band out of no wave noise and toward something closer to a song. Kim Gordon later called it their "faux-goth record," which is about as good a description as anyone has managed. Cult status in the American underground was already theirs; this was the record that started widening the circle.

They cut it with Martin Bisi at BC Studio in Brooklyn in March 1986. "Tom Violence" opens with Thurston Moore's alternately tuned guitars chiming like a broken music box, Gordon whispers through "Shadow Of A Doubt," and Lydia Lunch co-wrote "Marilyn Moore." Minutemen bassist Mike Watt guests on "In The Kingdom # 19," and "Expressway To Yr. Skull" builds into one of their great guitar storms before ending in a locked groove.

Critics now hear it as the place the band's greatness began, the runway to Sister and Daydream Nation. The locked groove at the end technically lasts forever, so do get up and lift the needle at some point.

Also at Kops: more Sonic Youth on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Goofin' (cat# Goo 019), a reissue of the 1986 album.