Goofin' Records

First complete Sonic Youth album is one of Thurston Moore's favorites.

Includes live cover of The Stooges''I Wanna Be Your Dog'. Vinyl includes digital download.

Originally slated to be a 7' to follow up their self-titled debut, Sonic Youth's Confusion Is Sex blossomed into the band's first album: a brain-bludgeoning, completely fried endeavor of dissonance and disarray, a perfect soundtrack for running from a chain-wielding gang near the SIN Club.

This was the sound of 1983 New York City, nothing like the jangly roots of college radio rock starting to formulate in Athens, Georgia. It sounded like no one else on Earth, for that matter. The raw, Wharton Tiers 8-track production is dark, the Kim Gordon- scrawled cover figure art of Thurston Moore is dark, Lee Ranaldo's back cover photo-collage and Catherine Ceresole's crumpled-xeroxed images that adorned the inside are dark. It's an album that moves Sonic Youth forward from their first EP almost by devolving backwards into true ugly, lo-fi primitivity.

The bareboned arsenal of junkpile guitars and implementation of alternate tunings was growing, and so were the songs that matched the individual attributes of each instrument: certain ones groan and growl a specific way that the band started to realize itself could become the compositional germ of a song.

Herein is the threshold of a new explosion of the band's creativity, replacing the comparatively cleaner buzz of the Sonic Youth EP with guitars that spew fractured, uglier chunks of sound everywhere, held down by menacing minimalist basslines (actually played by Thurston on half of this LP, and for the only time ever on 'Protect Me You,' Lee) and the brutal-yet-controlled metronomic drumming of Jim Sclavunos, augmented with replacement drummer Bob Bert's notable bashing on 'Making the Nature Scene' and grotty no-fi live rendition of 'I Wanna Be Your Dog.'

Hearing the crashedwindow intro of 'Inhuman' and subway-brake screech of 'The World Looks Red,' you can attest that while Sonic Youth's guitars are not quite yet being utilized in the totally controlled, lyrical fashion seen later on albums like Evol, Daydream Nation et al., they were well aware of the colors and tonalities that were unfolding and the possibilities presented.

Also, they were getting a grasp on adding colors to the chaos with tempered, simmering moments like Gordon's 'Shaking Hell' and Renaldo's chimy, home-taped 'Lee is Free.' 'Making the Nature Scene' and 'The World Looks Red' even toss in glints of hip-hop vocal approach way ahead of its time, albeit through a blender.

While its confrontationalism might have put off some critics, time has rewarded Confusion with a truly distinctive air and atmosphere in the Sonic discography, enough to have Moore declare it his fave along with the band's swan-song The Eternal. Brian Turner, WFMU.

Tracklisting:
1. (She's In A) Bad Mood
2. Protect Me You
3. Freezer Burn / I Wanna Be Your Dog
4. Shaking Hell
5. Inhuman
6. The World Looks Red
7. Confusion Is Next
8. Making The Nature Scene
9. Lee Is Free

Vinyl includes free download, CD and download include bonus track'a cover of Kim Fowley's witchy masterpiece 'Bubblegum'.

The third studio album by Sonic Youth, originally released in May 1986 on SST Records, shows the first signs that the band was ready to transform their no wave past into a greater alternative rock sensibility.

'EVOL - ¦ mark[s] the true departure point of Sonic Youth's musical evolution,' says Pitchfork, who place the album in the #31 slot of their Top 100 Albums of The 1980s. 'In measured increments, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo - ¦ bring form to the formless, tune to the tuneless, and with the help of Steve Shelley's drums - ¦, [impose] melody and composition on their trademark dissonance.'

Stereogum likewise praises the album as one that is 'full of suspense - ¦, the cornerstone [of] the Sonic Youth sound - ¦, ground zero for the combination of chiming guitars and atonal skronk - ¦ [and] muggy delirium - ¦. The virile Tom Violence'sounds less written than coaxed from a cauldron, the sort of song that fogs windows. The offkilter [droning love song] Starpower' - ¦ is sung [by Kim Gordon] in a frosty [Nico-evoking] monotone. In The Kingdom #19,'featuring Mike Watt on bass and - ¦ vocals [by Ranaldo] - ¦, is a harrowing story of a highway wreck over a suitably edgy instrumental backing punctuated by - ¦ live firecrackers into the vocal booth.'

'EVOL slithers into the unconscious,' notes Popstache. 'Once the [detuned melodies and haunting riffs and] final whispers of feedback [of Expressway to Yr. Skull'] depart from the speakers - ¦, the music [leaves] a faded footprint, forever reeling the listener back for another strange trip.' 'The seeds of greatness - ¦' 'Pitchfork

'A near-masterpiece.' 'Trouser Press

'A stunningly fluent mixture of avant-garde instrumentation and subversions of rock'n'roll.' 'All Music Guide

Tracklisting:
1. Tom Violence
2. Shadow of a Doubt
3. Starpower
4. In the Kingdom #19
5. Green Light
6. Death to Our Friends
7. Secret Girl
8. Marilyn Moore
9. Expressway to Yr. Skull
10. Bubblegum (CD-Only Bonus Track)

Classic 1987 album is one of the band's most beloved releases. Includes a cover of Crime's 'Hot Wire My Heart'.

Vinyl includes digital download card with a bonus track 'Let's get something straight".

There is no album in the entire corpus of indie rock'not Loveless, not Surfer Rosa, not Psychocandy' that reaches the heights of invention, joy, and magic of Sonic Youth's sublime fifth album.... The haunted reveries of Sister remain with you for years, even if you only hear them once - ¦.

Sister is the sonic manifestation of refracted light. It's a record that changes you.' Stereogum. One of Sonic Youth's most beloved albums, 1987's Sister incorporated the dissonance of their earlier releases into more traditional song structures. It's an innovative and thrilling work assuredly delivered by a band at the peak of their powers.

Reissued on the band's Goofin'imprint, this 2016 pressing includes a digital download card with the vinyl edition.

Tracklisting:
1. Schizophrenia
2. Catholic Block
3. Beauty Lies in the Eye
4. Stereo Sanctity
5. Pipeline / Kill Time
6. Tuff Gnarl
7. Pacific Coast Highway
8. Hot Wire My Heart
9. Cotton Crown
10. White Cross
11. Let's get something straight (Bonus Track)

CD Bonus Track:
11. Master-Dik

Previously unreleased studio recordings from 1986. LP Includes digital download code.

The slow-burn sounds of Sonic Youth's 1986 rehearsals to score Ken Friedman's spooky highway film Made In USA are yet another mile marker in the band's long and varied existence, now being issued as Spinhead Sessions (named for the North Hollywood studio used by SST label acts like Black Flag and Painted Willie).

These jams were later built upon for a full-on (and quite different) soundtrack production, but the rough sketches here find the band taking time with truly new and introspective sound worlds. It was basically a brand new way of working for Sonic Youth, albeit a challenging one, under the auspices of major Hollywood film production overlords, routing their way into the world of soundtrack scoring. And it all comes at a key time and place. It's no secret that 1986 was a transformative year for the band in many ways.

The gravitation to the beloved SST stable, in addition to Steve Shelley, now drumming, certainly gave Sonic Youth a renewed vigor and vocabulary. They were already an international touring machine, and gaining considerable steam with critics (even spinning the heads of detractors who had dismissed their arty downtown boho sensibilities prior to '86's EVOL).

Their cultdom with fans had concrete roots by this point, and the influences that were swarming in the band's orbit marked an exciting time, where almost any trajectory seemed possible, and they were going for it. Friedman's film worked on a relatively darker frame for a mainstream Hollywood flick; characters played by stars Chris Penn and Adrian Pasdar made a cross-country journey that started out in Centralia, Pennsylvania, a real-life, anthracite coal producing town that had to relocate all its residents due to a decades-long, inextinguishable underground fire.

The Sonics passed through this haunted-looking locale on their next tour after the sessions, and are pictured on the sleeve standing amidst smoldering embers. For the sounds they made at Spinhead, this image seems a fitting mental picture. Guitar harmonics billow like smoke, heavily reverbed drumming and shimmering cymbals echo from what sounds like the bottom of a deep mine.

This newly born Spinhead Sessions release once again defines Sonic Youth in a raw and engaging state of discovery at a terrific time. Is it a missing link between the complex, crafted cavernosity of EVOL and the frayedelectric powerline sizzle of Sister? Yes and no. It's an entirely unique animal, a meditative album where you can soak in the template of tapping overtones, sedate explorations of new chords, even sounding at times like AMM trying to play the VU's Sweet Sister Ray bootleg or something similar. It's trademark Sonic Youth at the core, and in an unfettered, dreamy state and time, there and gone like smoke. Brian Turner, WFMU Music Director.

Tracklisting:
1. Ambient Guitar & Dreamy Theme
2. Theme With Noise
3. High Mesa
4. Unknown Theme
5. Wolf
6. Scalping
7. Theme 1 Take 4