FEATURE:
A 100% Masterpiece
Sonic Youth’s Dirty at Thirty
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ON 21st July…
one of the great albums of the 1990s turns thirty. From the mighty and legendary Sonic Youth, Dirty scored a number six on the U.K. chart. Although it only got to eighty-three on the US Billboard 200, Dirty has been retrospectively seen as a masterpiece and one of the greatest albums ever. Produced by Sonic Youth and Butch Vig, there is a mix of Grunge and Rock. In 1991, Nirvana’s Nevermind set the music world alight. It is unsurprising that many bands were influenced by Grunge after the explosion and popularity of Nevermind. To mark the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of one of the all-time best albums, I wanted to combine some reviews and a feature. Udiscovermusic.com marked twenty-nine years of Dirty last July:
“In the wake of Nirvana’s all-conquering success with Nevermind, Sonic Youth’s decision to work with producer Butch Vig seemed at first a calculated attempt to court similar mainstream ears. One listen to the album that became Dirty, however, blows all such notions out of the water.
True, the album is notable for being their first to rely largely on songs that clock in at a radio-friendly three or four minutes, and Vig’s production certainly gave the group’s abrasive guitars additional punch, but these were perhaps the only concessions towards crafting anything remotely approaching a “unit shifter.” For one, the newfound brevity in song length (an unintelligible cover of proto-hardcore DC outfit The Untouchables’ “Nic Fit” doesn’t even scrape past a minute) didn’t extend to the album as a whole, making Dirty feel sometimes like an hour-long barrage from, on one side, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo’s coruscating guitars, and, from the other, Kim Gordon’s alternately breathy and scratched vocals. With hardcore icon Ian MacKaye drafted in to add extra bite to “Youth Against Fascism,” it’s clear that the group, despite releasing that song as a single (where it beat the odds the group had stacked against themselves and No.52 in the UK), were making it as difficult as possible for newcomers to see Dirty as a gateway album.
Such was the brilliance of Sonic Youth at this time. Seven albums and a decades’ worth of experimental music-making behind them, Moore and co were able to condense their more outré instincts into short, sharp attacks, seemingly piggy-backing grunge’s ascendancy without, really, compromising at all.
Undoubtedly, however, the Seattle scene’s success certainly led some to expect more of the same from Nirvana’s labelmates: released on July 21, 1992, Dirty remains their highest-charting album in the UK, reaching a remarkably successful No.6, while also making it to No.83 in the US – their best Stateside showing up to that point. However, what the uninitiated made of the likes of “Swimsuit Issue’”s frank address of sexual harassment in the workplace (coupled with a somber roll call of some of the titular magazine’s models), or the closing “Crème Brûlèe,” which was partially built around the sound of Thurston Moore trying to turn his equipment on (and features Gordon’s couplet, “Last night I dreamt I kissed Neil Young/If I was a boy I guess it would be fun”) is anyone’s guess.
What’s obvious, however, is that Sonic Youth reveled in the opportunity to hijack the grunge mainstream with some patented NYC avant-garde hijinks – and that Dirty remains a high point in a singular career”.
There may be some who are not familiar with Sonic Youth. Others might be more aware of earlier albums like 1990’s Goo. It is amazing that the band were so strong and inspired on their seventh studio album. A work that took them more to the mainstream, Dirty is an album that influenced so many other bands. This is what AllMusic said in their review of a 1992 classic:
“When DGC Records signed Nirvana in 1991, one of DGC's A&R reps expressed the opinion that, with plenty of touring and the right promotion, the new act might sell as well as its labelmate and touring partner Sonic Youth. The surprise success of Nevermind upended previous commercial expectations for Sonic Youth (among other established alternative rock bands), and when Dirty was released in 1992, it was seen by many as the band's big move toward the grunge market. Which doesn't make a lot of sense if you actually listen to the album; while Butch Vig's clean but full-bodied production certainly gave Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo's guitars greater punch and presence than they had in the past, and many of the songs move in the increasingly tuneful direction the band had been traveling with Daydream Nation and Goo, most of Dirty is good bit more jagged and purposefully discordant than its immediate precursors, lacking the same hallucinatory grace as Daydream Nation or the hard rock sheen of Goo. If anything, Dirty finds Sonic Youth revisiting the territory the band mapped out on Sister -- merging the propulsive structures of rock (both punk and otherwise) with the gorgeous chaos of their approach to the electric guitar -- and it shows how much better they'd gotten at it in the past five years, from the curiously beautiful "Wish Fulfillment" and "Theresa's Sound World" to the brutal "Drunken Butterfly" and "Purr." Dirty was also Sonic Youth's most overtly political album, railing against the abuses of the Reagan/Bush era on "Youth Against Fascism," "Swimsuit Issue," and "Chapel Hill," a surprising move from a band so often in love with cryptic irony. Heard today, Dirty doesn't sound like a masterpiece (like Daydream Nation) or a gesture toward the mainstream audience (like Goo) -- it just sounds like a damn good rock album, and on those terms it ranks with Sonic Youth's best work”.
To round things off, there is another review that I want to source. Rolling Stone had their say about Sonic Youth’s Dirty back in 1997. They make some interesting and valid observations:
“Rock has never seen a band quite like Sonic Youth, even if you discount the group’s innovative guitar tunings and unique slant on pop culture. For eleven years now, Sonic Youth — singer-guitarist Thurston Moore, singer-bassist Kim Gordon, guitarist Lee Ranaldo and drummer Steve Shelley — have surefootedly made their way from the New York noise-rock underground and indie labels to their present contract with Geffen, continually advancing but in increments and always retaining complete artistic control. Each album has been better recorded than the last, has further refined the band’s songwriting craft and chops, has expanded its range. Through it all, like Bob Dylan’s John Wesley Harding, they were “never known to make a foolish move.”
The Youth were early, enthusiastic supporters of Nirvana and of the whole Seattle-centered guitar-grunge scene, so it’s not surprising to find the band working with producer Butch Vig and mixer Andy Wallace of Nevermind fame on Dirty. It’s the first time the band has used an outside producer, and it works, giving this eighth SY album added richness, clarity, punch and amp-static snarl as needed. It’s more focused and harder hitting than Goo (1990), the band’s last album and its Geffen debut, but the disc-to-disc development is well within previous SY parameters, not even as radical a jump as the one from Daydream Nation (1988) to Goo.
Oh, by the way, Dirty is a great Sonic Youth disc, easily ranking with Daydream Nation and Sister (1987) among the band’s most unified and unforgettable recorded works. The aural “dirt” is one element that pulls the album together. Another is the thematic move away from the cyberpunk allegory of recent discs and squarely into a confrontation with life in America during a particularly scary election year. Sentiments along the lines of “I believe Anita Hill/The judge’ll rot in hell” and “Yeah, the president sucks,” from the coruscating “Youth Against Fascism,” dovetail with the sexual-harassment issue addressed in the skronking head-clanger “Swimsuit Issue” and with the melodically haunting, ideologically devastating “Chapel Hill,” a sharp retort to the geriatric politics of Jesse Helms and his ilk. The aura of insurgency provides a charged context for the disc’s more personal songs, upping the intensity and the emotional stakes and fusing a collection of diverse tracks into a scorched and scorching whole. Dirty is a burner”.
A masterful and hugely important album, Sonic Youth’s Dirty warrants a lot of new respect and writing ahead of its thirty anniversary on 21st July. I do not know whether the band are marking it with an anniversary release or re-release. I hope that something comes about. Even if you were not around in 1992, you can put the album on and be affected by it. It still sounds so vital and like nothing else…
THIRTY years on.