Album Rating: 4.5

Sigh, here we go again. (Note: none of these albums are lower than 3.0 so the "tiers" are respective to SY's oeuvre and nothing else.)



S TIER

• Bad Moon Rising

• Sister



A TIER

• Daydream Nation

• Washing Machine

• Confusion Is Sex

• Goo



B TIER

• Sonic Youth (debut)

• Evol

• A Thousand Leaves

• NYC Ghosts & Flowers

• Sonic Nurse



C TIER

• Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star

• Murray Street

• Dirty



D TIER

• Rather Ripped

• The Eternal

Album Rating: 4.0

for me it's something like



S tier: bad moon rising and that's it

A tier: this, evol, daydream nation, sonic nurse, murray street, a thousand leaves

B tier: confusion is sex, washing machine, NYC, dirty

C tier: s/t, experimental jet set

D tier: the eternal and rather ripped [2]

rather ripped is the one that begins with “reena,” right? that’s a good song, I like how it seems to accumulate power even though it doesn’t change much.

Album Rating: 5.0

wow i really do need to check NYC huh whats with the 2.shit average

Pitchfork slammed it with the 0.0 and nothing was the same. Christgau gave it an A they didn’t listen.

did you guys know last year arsmoriendi sat in a room with like 25 people in folding chairs and watched Lee ranaldo play like two songs on acoustic guitar and talk about a like 18xLP compilation about birds whose proceeds go toward saving the birds

The list of artists on that comp is insane look it up

Album Rating: 5.0

wow glad i asked thats some cool history

https://www.discogs.com/release/25458235-Various-For-The-Birds-The-Birdsong-Project

Like on god if you have $386 this thing is TWENTY LPs excuse my mistake.

Album Rating: 4.0

dam

i went to school with one of lee's kids. lee is a nice guy

Album Rating: 4.5

lmao Pitchfork gave it a fucking 0.0? as if we needed further proof that the staff over there are a bunch of crowd-pandering glue sniffers.

Album Rating: 4.0

we should all pool our money together and buy a copy

that pitchfork 0.0 was contemporaneous U can’t rope that in with them with giving Cardi B a 8.7 or whatever. You have to pick one of them being right

Album Rating: 4.5

I'm sure you could drum up some mega-ass album from 2000 that they gave like a 6.2, which isn't a great score but is still 6.2 points higher than NYC.

Album Rating: 5.0

Bad Moon isn't on the same tier as this at all for me, or EVOL or Daydream or even Goo and Dirty. While great, it always struck me as sort of hazy and undefined feeling, lacking a sort of punch, structure, and pop sensibility that would do wonders for their sound later on. It's very loose and ambient sometimes, spineless even. After Brave Men Run, it takes like 15 mins for another solid drum groove to show up. Death Valley '69 is absolutely the highlight of that album for me, cause it's closer to what they would go on to become.

"Christgau gave it an A they didn’t listen."

this makes me want to never listen

Album Rating: 4.7

"Bad Moon isn't on the same tier as this at all for me, or EVOL or Daydream or even Goo and Dirty [...] It's very loose and ambient sometimes, spineless even"

minimising posts this week while I'm on holiday, but this is genuinely the worst SY take I've seen since Colton stopped posting on these threads. lock M. Dead in a shark-sized fishtank with only bandcamp field recordings for company for as long as it takes em to never post here again, and then let's hear if it's spineless to live without percussion

Ryus ranking is v good and would be perf if EVOL and this went up a tier

and Murray + NYC/Dirty dropped at least half a tier

why you postin like that he was talkin about music and you’re talking about him

Album Rating: 4.7

honey don't take the lid off you are p4k and christgau-posting and have no sway over karmic bad take fantasies as such

it’s just weird doin tough-guy real-life hypotheticals on sputnikmusic. whatever the subject matter I say karma favs the people who keep it coolin instead of whatever that was

Album Rating: 5.0

lmao Really? The difference between me and Colton is that I'm a huge fan of the band. I dig plenty of less drum focused, ambient, noise based, and more textural music. I love lots of the stuff out of the NYC no wave scene that birthed SY. I actually LIKE field recordings and lowercase and stuff of that nature so I wouldn't have a terrible time in your scenario until I had to pee.



I'm just of the opinion that Sonic Youth are at their best when they're combining the noisy tendencies with melody and that more punk rock groove and propulsive energy. I feel like the quality gap between Bad Moon and the run from EVOL to Dirty is wide enough to think of Bad Moon as kind of a stepping stone album. Not bad by any stretch, just not as incredible as what would come.