Every Sonic Youth album, ranked worst to best
From the early dazzle of EVOL to the late-period beauty of Rather Ripped, we run through every studio album from the New York avatars of avant-rock cool
Music Lists Sonic Youth
In hindsight, it feels like we eventually took Sonic Youth a bit for granted. By the time of the band’s implosion following the very public divorce of bassist Kim Gordon and guitarist Thurston Moore in 2011, there had been almost a decade of records in which the band’s pioneering—and ever-evolving—mix of avant-garde noise with radio-friendly rock and roll was received with the acclaim generally reserved for artists seen as bedrock pillars of a musical community that have nothing more to prove. As The A.V. Club put it in a review of 2002's Murray Street, “doesn’t mark an epochal moment for Sonic Youth, but its familiar nods and new ingredients… stake out another high point.” In other words: Good job, keep doing what you’re doing, etc.
But just as nobody ever expects the day to arrive when they don’t immediately rush to hear a new album from their favorite band, no one can anticipate the end of a group that felt like it would always be around—had always been around, somehow, in the collective unconscious of a million indie-rock obsessives who felt in Sonic Youth the musical and aesthetic pull of counter-cultural cool. The band, even as brash young upstarts coming of age in the no-wave scene of downtown Manhattan in the ’80s, always came across like intimidating but inspiring older siblings, introducing shy midwestern nerds and coastal outsiders alike to the radical possibilities of rock music fused with the experimental avant-garde—and a healthy dose of punk. Unless you were Robert Christgau, issuing edicts on the state of American music from a typewriter in The Village Voice office, Sonic Youth came across like they had something to teach you, and it was gonna be thrilling.
So when the long-running outfit called it quits over a decade ago, it felt like we were losing a group we hadn’t sufficiently embraced in recent years. The band members’ roles as elder statesman, combined with the stolid consistency of quality in its musical output, made it too easy for fans to just accept Sonic Youth’s presence in the pop-culture firmament without properly appreciating what it could still bring to the avant-rock table. As writer Gabe Delahaye has called it, it’s the Curse Of Being Very Good: “At a certain point, you get tired of eating the same lunch every day, even if that lunch is FILET MIGNON (widely recognized as the finest lunch there is). This is the curse of being filet mignon.”
Sonic Youth was just about the most badass filet mignon imaginable. Watch any scene from 1991: The Year Punk Broke, the sometimes satirical documentary of the band’s European tour with openers Nirvana, and try to imagine a world in which impressionable alt-rock youth wouldn’t want to spend as much time as possible soaking up the wit, weirdness, and musical chops of all four of them, even wallflower-anonymous drummer Steve Shelley (arguably responsible for making sure the world heard Cat Power for the first time, among other commendable acts). Whatever “cool” actually means, rest assured, it included Sonic Youth. And with the release this week of In/Out/In, a collection of unreleased music from the band’s final 10 years, it’s a good time to remember that fact.
But which Sonic Youth was the best? Throughout its three-decade existence, the group’s sound underwent multiple transformations—sometimes as part of a cultural zeitgeist redefining contemporary rock, at other points an insular recalibration far removed from the confines of the “alternative music” charts. And yet the signature sounds retained some surprising consistency across the years; there are moments on 1985’s Bad Moon Rising not so far removed from the churning beauty of the band’s 2009 swan song, The Eternal. It’s part of what made it so indelible: Even while forever pushing the boundaries of genres and sounds, every song remained stubbornly, and instantly, recognizable as Sonic Youth.
To truly trace the arc of its music from the finest to the slightly less fine, a few parameters were necessary. This list only includes albums considered part of the band’s canon of studio releases, meaning the records Sonic Youth put out as part of its free-to-experiment-and-improvise label, SYR, aren’t included. (This includes the variety of EPs and soundtracks put to tape over the years, though not the first EP, as we’ll explain below.) That also goes for the playful one-off release The Whitey Album: yes, it’s the band members making music together, but look right there on the cover—different name, different project. Consider it the Facebook/Winklevoss rule: If it were a Sonic Youth album, it’d be a Sonic Youth album. And while The Destroyed Room and other compilation releases contain some excellent music, they weren’t conceived as albums, and are therefore disqualified.
Still, that leaves 16 albums’ worth of music to absorb, from the earliest days of lo-fi magic to the zenith of commercial polish during the alt-rock heyday. (Though, as always with Sonic Youth, “commercial polish” should be graded on quite the sliding scale.) Read on to see where we ranked each record, and if at any point you disagree (why would you?), just remember that Thurston Moore probably shares your contradictory opinion—after all, he thinks the best songs Sonic Youth ever wrote are the ones “nobody knows about.”
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63 Comments
The next slide/previous slide buttons block the play and volume controls on all the videos. Sure would be improved by not being a slideshow.
But…but…slideshows are sooo hot right now!* Engagement! Pivot to video! Other buzzwords!*(Assuming that “right now” is circa 2010)
And changing slides does not stop the playback from the previous slide(s).
Very exciting to see someone else place Goo at number 1 here and some love for Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star. You’re alright in my book, Alex!
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Bull in The Heather is the one that’s on all my playlists. Perfect song.One of my best friends was dating Kathleen Hanna when that video was made. I was so jealous!
Never got the love for Goo, which kind of craps out after a strong 4 or 5 track opening. EVOL is way too low and The Eternal is way too high. Interesting to see Washing Machine and A Thousand Leaves so low. They seem to be fan favorites that are just way too long. Washing Machine in particular feels like The Diamond Sea is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Always nice to see the often overlooked Rather Ripped get some love, though I wouldn’t rank it that high. It’s also really hard to listen to it now and not notice just how much it foretells Kim and Thurston’s split.
I love Rather Ripped so much. It sounds like a totally new band just having fun, and it has so many beautiful moments.
Rather Ripped is like another one of my favorite albums by a band that I am only a casual fan of – New Adventures in Hi-Fi, by R.E.M. Both albums, I think, get eclipsed by the more monumental albums in their respective discographies, yet both are stunners, and two of my personal favorite albums.
Goo was solid for a major-label debut, but putting it at #1 is ridiculous. Not as ridiculous as putting Daydream Nation at #2; seems like a clear editorial directive to not do the predictable (but correct) thing and put it at #1. Dirty at #6 is a bad choice as well, but I guess it was the first time people saw SY on MTV.For the record, the Top 5 should be:5. Confusion Is Sex4. EVOL3. Sister2. Bad Moon Rising1. Daydream Nation
“Not as ridiculous as putting Daydream Nation at #2; seems like a clear editorial directive to not do the predictable (but correct) thing and put it at #1.”Came here to say exactly this; I’m all for challenging critical consensus, but sometimes the obvious answer is obvious because it’s empirically correct.
All the 80s records are ranked too low but who are we kidding; everyone knows rock bands start to hit their stride in year 12.
Yeah the whole list has an ‘I’m a 90s Kid!!!!’ vibe
I can’t argue with your top 5. Anything after Daydream Nation was just not up to the snuff of their earlier output. I recall liking Goo when it was released, but it was mostly for love of the earlier albums – I can’t listen to it these days.
Yeah, certainly not to say they did nothing good after Daydream, but on at least on their DGC albums they calmed down after that. But the SYR releases showed they were still innovative.
not to say they did nothing good after Daydream
my biggest problem with their post-Daydream stuff is that every album felt at least 20 minutes too long (even though they were still shorter than Daydream!). Murray Streets is so much better than Washing Machine or A Thousand Leaves because it does similar things while only being about 47 minutes instead of 67 minutes.
That’s a solid top 5.
This is a great list but lacks “Ciccone Youth”. As for the lack of love of “Goo”, at the time it was less a sellout than a culmination of a bunch of their tendencies. This was, outside of “Kool Thing”, not super mainstream in terms of acceptance. It was just when the mainstream was just about to accept this, hip hop, “grunge” and all other stands of “alternative” all at once. People may not realize that all of that stuff was underground-ish and not as widely accepted as today. Lollapalooza and Nirvana broke through and now, in retrospect, people think those bands sold out but people just were not having any of the sound of any of it for quite awhile until then and even after Now, I will accept all of the “Ok, boomer” retorts…
Ciccone Youth I take as a side project, and in any case doesn’t quite have the heft of the great SY records. I like it plenty, tho kitschy SY is my least favorite flavor of the band.I’d never say SY was as much a major-label sellout as, say, Soul Asylum would be…they were lucky (smart?) enough to strike a good deal with DGC where they were pretty much left alone, and I think the label had modest expectations for how big they could get. I thought Goo was a little streamlined but no way was it going to be a million seller in 1990; it’s still really sharp around the edges. Dirty, on the other hand, seems like they decided they wanted to chase that Nirvana cash
Basically my exact take right here.
I love Goo, but I wouldn’t rank it #1.
Listen to Goo while after you’ve peaked on LSD….I did that back in the day and came to love it. As for the latter half of the album, Mildred Pierce and Scooter & Jinx are pretty terrible, but Disappearer, Cinderella’s Big Score, and Titanium Expose are pretty great.
I picked up Screaming Fields of Sonic Love at Love Garden in Lawrence, KS back in maybe ‘98 while at a summer camp. It was a nifty intro, though that initial introduction makes me forget I only really like about half of Bad Moon Rising.Anyway, good memory, great band. “Sunday” is possibly overrated or underrated but either way that’s me sixteen and sitting in my Honda Accord at night.
Love Garden Sounds, hell yes. I bought a bunch of SY EPs from their used bins once, including Master-Dik
Nice and great
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Boy did Thurston turn out to be such a sleaze
Most Sonic Youth rankings run pretty similar with one or two curveballs thrown so I’m not aghast at Daydream Nation at two – I actually do find Goo is often underrated – but having Washing Machine, Sonic Nurse and A Thousand Leaves below XJet Set, Rather Ripped and The Eternal feels super thirsty.
Sonic Youth sucks.
Sonic Youth is one of those bands where there is probably far more songs that I don’t like than ones I do, but the ones that I do are absolute masterpieces.
Murray Street and Sonic Nurse are two of my favorites. I’d rank them higher, personally.
Experimental Jet Set is ranked far too high; it’s a scattered mess of a record. As is Goo, but that one is so cool that I get the impulse to overrate it (who doesn’t remember watching “Kool Thing” the first time?), even though maybe half of it is good.This listed is weighted far too strongly against early SY. It’s telling that you hated NYCGF (one of my favorites) when it is one of the few albums that evokes that early, spare sound. The early EP is kinda meh, but Confusion Is Sex is one of their best mood-setting albums.I do give you credit for threading the Sister/Daydream Nation debate pretty well, though.
I’ve been saying since the mid-’90s that the band needs to change its name to “Sonic Middle-Age.” By now it ought to be “Sonic Seniors.”
“Steel Wheelchair”
Nice to see Sonic Nurse getting at least some appreciation. Maybe not the best of the later albums, but Stones is far and away my favourite track of theirs from the 2000s.
If meat is your thing, I really think filet mignon is a better dinner. For lunch it’s all about the poke. On rice with a little edamame? Come. On. This is a not a Sonic Youth metaphor by the way.
I spent one very good summer following Sonic Youth around the southeast. that was a fun time.Also, when i was an DJ for my college radio station, Diamond Sea was the signal for my friends to come hang out, because we were out in the alley smoking weed.
Why weren’t the SYR albums ranked in here? I loved those albums.
Any Sonic Youth ranking that has Goo at the top has something intrinsically wrong with it. EVOL should be No. 2 without a shadow of a doubt.
What the hell. No seriously. Sure, you could argue that Confusion Is Sex is somewhat half-formed compared to what came afterward, but second to last? And putting Bad Moon Rising anywhere but in the top 3 is unfathomable, much less rating the listless Thousand Leaves above it. I’m all for reevaluating the later albums and giving them another chance, but I’m tempted to say that if you don’t see how the entire Rising album doesn’t work together as a slow culmination, I’m honestly not sure you get Sonic Youth. Also The Rising is a terrible album.
Putting in a word for The Wild, The Innocent & the E-Street Shuffle. There. That’s my word.
I mean, clearly. Just the piano intro to New York City Serenade.
Eh, I can definitely see why Confusion and Bad Moon get relatively less love. Confusion takes a few tracks to really get going and even then it’s pretty abrasive even for SY. I like BMR as a whole, but it’s always felt like a padded out EP to me, with the padding just making the whole thing sound like a lot of meandering between much more interesting moments. Neither sound like the band entirely knows what they want to do yet.I can also see why people prefer A Thousand Leaves, but man is that an inconsistent slog. It’s only slightly longer than Daydream but feels twice as long.
I mean if abrasiveness is your problem you might not be the right person to write a Sonic Youth best to worst list. And I really disagree about Rising being padded; it absolutely feels to me like every song is there for a reason and adds up to a larger picture. It’s probably the most thematically coherent album they’ve ever made.
I think it’s padded more in terms of the interstitial bits that help tie one track to the next. I get they’re going for a seamless journey or whatever with each track segueing into the next, but said segues are often 2 minutes of reedy weeeeeeeeeeeeEEEeeeEEEEeeee feedback just to get to the main nut of the track.
That’s the best part though!
Oh boy. I absolutely adore Sonic Youth, and I have since I discovered them through Dirty. I was legitimately distressed when they broke up, mostly because they were hitting a late career high with Rather Ripped and The Eternal.I’ve never posted before, but I just cannot abide Goo being chosen over Daydream Nation. It’s baffling.In my option, they have three masterpieces, albeit for slightly different reasons.1. Daydream Nation. One of the best non-mainstream (and mainstream) albums of the 80s and it just perfectly sums up all that they can do as a band.2. Bad Moon Rising. I think it’s their first great album and shows their level of ambition and skill. It’s amazing the way it just bleeds from one song to another and crafts a distinct feeling.3. Washing Machine. I don’t get the relative dislike of this one. I think it’s is also like Daydream Nation in that it shows all that they can do.OK, now back to work. This was stewing in my brain.
You know it is weird to me that fans of anything get distressed by rankings where one album is above the other. Of the bands I am a fan of, I don’t care if anyone puts an album above another because all of them have things that could have been considered better.
Fortunately PatrickJams explains why he likes these SY records, as if he’s contributing to a conversation about the band! Comment reads the same way if you ignore the numbers. And he doesn’t sound ‘distressed’, he’s responding to the article and offering an alternative top 3! Focus on content, not presentation.
Hot take and a half to put Goo above Daydream Nation. Nicely done. God it is incredible how much astonishing music these guys created.
I don’t understand it. Really, I cannot. I am 44 years old and many, maaany years ago I left the “I cannot understand why you don’t have exactly the same opinion as me” or “being a fan means having a fixed structure of what is good and what is not in this artist career”. I understand why someone thinks that Vespertine is the best Björk, or why someone could consider that The Sound were better than Joy Division. I am just glad when people talk about those things and see how other people interpret the things I felt attracted to.I will never understand those who say “as a fun, you must be drunk to put Daydream Nation anywhere else than on number one”. Why are you so moved or offended or triggered by… rankings… instead of talking about the band and what those albums mean to you compared to others for example, which is supposedly what you like? Are you really fans or do you like to be on your own hole of “I am the only real fan”?Sonic Youth are cool but the discussions around them remind me of the worst of the Mike Oldfield fandom.
I’m 45 and many maaany years ago Sonic Youth could actually call themselves “Youth”.
Pretty much. I have a friend who grew up listening to a lot of Pink Floyd. But she grew up in the 90s. To her, Pink Floyd was The Division Bell and Momentary Lapse of Reason. Those are still her favorites, although she is now aware of and familiar with the 70s run of classics from Meddle through The Wall. To me, preferring the post-Waters version of the band over those albums seems borderline crazy. But she is looking at it through a different lens—predominantly, a slightly younger lens—than I am. Not to mention that we simply have different aesthetic preferences, rooted in all kinds of things (when we grew up being just one of them). So I just have to remind myself when I talk to her about this that her version of the band—who they are in her head—is different than it is for me.Same with Sonic Youth. Lots of people discovered them in the ‘90s, via Dirty and “Mote” and “Titanium Expose” (which was prominently featured in a popular film of the day). They had moved beyond beyond cult noise-rock heroes into something like mainstream (albeit alternative/mainstream) acceptance. And they were, for nearly the first time, writing something like pop songs. That is nothing but a different lens through which to view and like the band.I have and love Daydream Nation. But my first Sonic Youth albums were Goo and Dirty. I still love them the best. Sorry, but I do. They’re packed with songs I love (and a couple that I hate). Daydream Nation, as majestic as it is, is closer to a soundtrack, a full album statement with fewer notable highlights, and I don’t always have the patience to appreciate it on its own terms.
Very well put!
I mean, are we supposed to look at this list and think ‘That is an opinion. I will now read other opinions.’? It’s a listicle on a pop-culture site with (for now) a comments section. Of course we’re supposed to talk about it, and it is worth hashing out what version of SY is going to dominate going forward, the early aggressively experimental art band of the 80s (this one, I say), the friendlier grandparents of grunge in the 1990s (which this article tends to lean towards) or the gormless but restlessly interesting band of the 2000s. I don’t see any evidence that anyone is ‘triggered’ or ‘offended’, and making this claim seems like an attempt to shut down discussion, or at least police what discussions are acceptable and which aren’t (why is it OK to discuss Bjork but not Sonic Youth?). Certainly no one is claiming to be ‘the only fan’, the contrary really, people are talking about their SY fandom! If you don’t like the topic of discussion feel free to step aside; this is America!
That Washing Machine ranking is a war crime.
The Experimental Jetset ranking is an even bigger one
I think I have had more fun listening to Goo than Daydream Nation. Like, there are more memorable and enjoyable songs.I think the debut EP is better than it gets credit for. They sounded pretty good as a cold, post-punk sort of band.
Lee Ranaldo, not Renaldo.
I just relistened to The Eternal and it sounds like a spoof of Sonic Youth. Daydream Nation should obviously be number one
This list is a total nightmare. Washing Machine is their best album, followed by Sister, A Thousand Leaves, and Sonic Nurse. Daydream rounds out the top five. By the way, Bad Moon Rising is woefully underrated.
Sonic Youth EP is stellar and in my top five. I have no idea what this reviewer is talking about. The guitars are out of standard tuning from the very first second.
Man, I’d put Murray St. in the top 5. Definitely above Rather Ripped (which is great, also!).
Wow! Great list! I was not expecting “Goo” to be number one, but I totally agree. “Daydream Nation” is probably a little more consistent, but nothing on it brings me quite to the soaring heights of “Dirty Boots,” “Mary-Christ,” “Kool Thing,” “Mildred Pierce,” and “Cinderella’s Big Score” (probably my favorite track ever by SY. It’s truly the better album. The only issue I might have with this list is the placement of EVOL. Top 5, for sure! I’d say number 3! Good job, though. It’s always nice to read these lists from a writer who obviously knows and loves the band!