Sonic Youth: Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star [BACK TO BLACK/DGC]

Why you'll love it

This remastered reissue includes a lyric insert and a download card. The album reached No. 10 in the UK and No. 34 on the Billboard 200, the band's highest US peak for fifteen years.

This edition

• Remastered
• Lyrics included
• Download card included

About the album

Fresh off Dirty, their most major-label-friendly record, Sonic Youth went on tour with Pavement, Sebadoh and Royal Trux and came home wanting to turn things down. They went back to Sear Sound in New York, the studio where they'd made Sister, with Butch Vig producing again, and made a quieter, sketchier album that looks back to their SST years.

"Bull In The Heather" is the calling card, a loping, hypnotic single whose video starred Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill. "Winner's Blues" opens the record on a lone acoustic guitar, "Starfield Road" and "Screaming Skull" deliver the classic Sonic Youth squall in short, sharp bursts, and "Bone" and "Quest For The Cup" bend noise into odd, catchy shapes. "Sweet Shine" closes on a gentle, drifting note. Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley trade vocals and textures throughout, and Vig keeps the sound close and dry.

Critics praised the way it balanced noise with melody, and its loose, intimate feel has aged beautifully. The sleeve credits list cosmelodic manifestations and arc/weld hyper-assist among the jobs on the session, which is the sort of job title we'd quite like for the stockroom.

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

Tracklist

Listen

On DGC / UMe (cat# B0023317-01), a reissue of the 1994 album.