Sonic Youth

The band's 1985 LP takes their No Wave punk nihilism and pits it against American classic rock and finds that the results are bleak. There is a dark, wide-open space on this record as the group begins to utilize clanging, ill-at-ease guitar drones with vivid, fragmented lyrics. You also get the group's first great single "Death Valley '69" as well as the Flower EP.

They're sure to disagree--what else are they good for?--but despite all their apocalyptic integrity and unmediated whoziwhatsis, the achievement of their first halfway decent record is strictly formal: simple, rhythmic songs that neither disappear beneath nor get the better of the clanging and grinding of their brutal late-industrial guitars. Whatever credibility the guitars lend to their no doubt painful but nonetheless hackneyed manic depression is undermined by their usual sociopathic fantasies, and in the end the music isn't ugly or ominous or bombs bursting midair. It's just interesting. (Grade - B)