EVOL is the third studio album by American alternative rock band Sonic Youth, released in 1986 on SST Records. The album cover features a picture of Lung Leg, a still taken from Submit to Me, a film by Richard Kern. The album is notable for being the first with new drummer Steve Shelley, replacing Bob Bert, and for showing signs of the band transitioning away from their noise-rock past and toward a greater rock sensibility. It was the first album by the band released on the SST label. By 1986, label founder Greg Ginn was anxious for SST to move away from its American hardcore roots, and signing Sonic Youth was an undeniably important step for the label, as well as for the band. The record marks the second straight for the band in which it had worked with New York singer/performance artist Lydia Lunch. Lunch had shared vocal duties on Bad Moon Rising's "Death Valley '69" and on this record she co-wrote the tune "Marilyn Moore". "Shadow of a Doubt" takes a great part of its lyrical imagery from the Hitchcock film Strangers on a Train: "Met a stranger on a train/you'll kill him and I'll kill her/swear it wasn't meant to be". On the vinyl format of the album, the time length for "Expressway to Yr. Skull" was indicated by the symbol for infinity; the final moment of the song featured a locked groove, making it theoretically endless. The CD format added a bonus track: the band's cover of the Kim Fowley tune "Bubblegum." One single, a radio edit of "Starpower", was released from the album, with "Bubblegum" and an edited "Expressway to Yr. Skull" as B-sides. Read more on Last.fm.

Daydream Nation is the fifth studio album by the American alternative rock band Sonic Youth. It was released in October 1988 by Enigma in the United States, and by Blast First in the United Kingdom. A number of publications, including Rolling Stone, Spin Magazine, and Pitchfork Media have hailed it as one of the best albums of the 1980s. As a result, it is regarded as a milestone of 1980s underground music. Although arguably the two albums immediately before it—Evol and Sister—mark Sonic Youth's first attempts at shifting from their roots in unsettling noise-rock to a somewhat more accessible combination of avant guitar experimentation and traditional rock, for many listeners, Daydream Nation is the apex where this change fully took hold. The album cover itself invokes this transition, with the 1983 Gerhard Richter photorealist painting Kerze ("Candle"). The back cover art is a similar Richter painting from 1982. Nevertheless, initial sales were poor, partly because Enigma Records, Sonic Youth's American record label, went out of business not long after the record's release. After a period of being out of print, Daydream Nation was reissued by DGC in 1993, which had signed the band largely on the strength of the crossover critical acclaim reaped by the album. In 1988, the single "Teen Age Riot", charted on Billboard Magazine's newly created Modern Rock Tracks chart at #20. In 2007, Sonic Youth undertook a series of performances of the album in its entirety. On June 12, 2007, a two-CD deluxe edition of the album was released. It contains live versions of every track on the album, plus studio recordings of some cover songs. A 4-LP vinyl version was released on July 17, 2007. This is Deluxe Edition and it should be called Daydream Nation (Deluxe Edition) , original release has only 12 tracks Read more on Last.fm.

Murray Street is a 2002 album by Sonic Youth. It was the first album by the group to feature Jim O'Rourke as an official fifth member. Members of noise improv group Borbetomagus appear on "Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style." One of the young girls on the album's cover is Coco Hayley Gordon Moore, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon's daughter. The back cover features a photograph of an office building on the west corner of Murray Street and W Broadway near Ground Zero in Manhattan. The address is 75 Park Place. Sonic Youth's studio between 1996 and 2006 was called Echo Canyon and it was located on Murray Street. Read more on Last.fm.

Sonic Youth's eleventh album "Washing Machine" is the first record to almost exclusively feature Kim Gordon on guitar rather than bass, and contains some of their lengthiest material since "Goo" and "Daydream Nation", including the epic "The Diamond Sea" which drifts onward for an unprecedented 20 minutes, still the longest track on any Sonic Youth album (excluding the SYR releases, and the extended version on The Destroyed Room). Incidentally, "The Diamond Sea" would prove to be one of the band's most popular songs, and it along with Sonic Youth's headlining spot on the summer Lollapalooza tour would introduce legions of new fans to their music. "Washing Machine" peaked at #39 on the UK Album Chart. Read more on Last.fm.

Sonic Nurse is an album by Sonic Youth, released on June 7, 2004. The cover art was made by renowned artist Richard Prince from his notorious Nurse Paintings series. Furthermore, one of Prince's photographic creations in this series is entitled "Dude Ranch Nurse" which is also the name of a song on this record. "Pattern Recognition" is based on the 2003 William Gibson novel of the same name. They have used Gibson's work as influence before, notably on a few tracks from Daydream Nation. "Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream" was previously released as "Mariah Carey and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream" on the first Narnack Buddy Series 7". Read more on Last.fm.

Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star is an album by alternative rock band Sonic Youth, first released in May 1994. Included is possibly the group's biggest hit, "Bull in the Heather." Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre appears in the music video for this song. Lee Ranaldo did not write or sing any songs on this album. Chart Performance The album peaked at #34 on the Billboard 200 chart. Previously, the band's best performance on that chart was Dirty, which reached #89. To date, this is their highest peak on the US charts. The album has sold 242,000 copies in the US according to Soundscan. Cancelled single "Self-Obsessed and Sexxee" was intended to be the second single from this album. A promo CD was issued, but plans for a regular release were cancelled and promo pressing ceased. The remaining copies were sold off through Sonic Death. The CD included the same b-sides as "Bull in the Heather." Notes "Screaming Skull" is about the band's nostalgia for their days on independent labels, particularly SST Records, which is mentioned frequently throughout the song, along with the label's "Superstore" in Los Angeles. "Doctor's Orders" is sung by Kim Gordon on the album. The "Bull in the Heather" single contains an alternate version with Thurston Moore singing. To save tape costs, the band recorded over the master tapes of Sister. When the volume of the album is turned up, especially in between tracks, one can hear Sister being played in its entirety. Read more on Last.fm.

Goo is an album by alternative rock band Sonic Youth, released on June 26, 1990. A remastered version was released in 2005. Goo was the first album released after the band signed to major label Geffen Records. Their albums became more accessible and less experimental, but still retained elements of a trademark collage of noise. Many songs on Goo start and end abruptly; a departure from Daydream Nation which was known for its long, psychedelic guitar intros and outros. Songs The album's lead track, "Dirty Boots", evokes old blues slang in its declaration that "It's time to rock the road/And tell the story of the jelly rollin'/Dirty boots are on/Hi de ho." The second track, "Tunic (Song for Karen)", is about Karen Carpenter, a female rock drummer who died from anorexia nervosa. It imagines her in heaven, happy, playing the drums again and meeting new friends Dennis Wilson, Elvis Presley and Janis Joplin. The album featured the single "Kool Thing", on which Chuck D from the rap group Public Enemy guested. The song is purported to be about the disillusionment that Gordon experienced after interviewing LL Cool J for Spin Magazine the previous year. "Are you going to liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?" Gordon asks in the song, but receives only hipster gibberish in return. "Kool Thing" became the song that many casual music fans associate with the band. The album version of "Mary-Christ" fades out with a portion of the intro to "Kool Thing". This is because in the recording session for "Mary-Christ" the band went right into "Kool Thing", but this take of "Kool Thing" was not chosen for the album. The album's title derives from the song "My Friend Goo", a portrait of a friend who "sticks just like glue." Cover The cover is a Raymond Pettibon illustration based on a paparazzi photo of Maureen Hindley and her first husband David Smith, witnesses in the case of the "Moors Murders" serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, driving to the trial in 1966. The handwritten text reads, "I stole my sister's boyfriend. It was all whirlwind, heat, and flash. Within a week we killed my parents and hit the road." Video In 1991, a long-form music video version of Goo was released on VHS. A music video for each song from the album is included; the track listing is identical to the "original release" list above. In 2004, nearly the entire contents of the Goo video was included on the DVD compilation Corporate Ghost: The Videos: 1990-2002; only a short fragment that appeared after the conclusion of "Titanium Exposé" on the 1991 video is missing. Read more on Last.fm.

Rather Ripped is the title of an album by Sonic Youth, which was released on June 13, 2006. It is the last album the band had to release to fulfill their contractual obligation to Geffen Records. Jim O'Rourke did not take part in the making of the record. It was reported that some of the gear stolen in 1999 was surprisingly recovered and that it may have been used for recording of the album. The album was described by Thurston Moore as "a super song record" containing "rockers and ballads". The album's working titles were "Sonic Life" and "Do You Believe in Rapture?" The name "Rather Ripped" comes from a now defunct record store in Berkeley, CA. Rather Ripped contained three singles, "Rather Ripped Album Sampler", "Helen Lundeberg/Eyeliner", and "Incinerate". "Incinerate", a track from this album, has received significant radio airplay. On the UK release of the album, two bonus tracks were included ("Helen Lundeberg" and "Eyeliner"), which were taken from an untitled single that was released shortly before the record. "Helen Lundeberg" is also available in the USA as a bonus track on the iTunes Music Store digital download edition of the album. On the Japanese release of the album, three bonus tracks were included. In addition to the two UK bonus tracks ("Helen Lundeberg" and "Eyeliner"), the track "Do You Believe in Rapture?" (psychedelic mix) was also included. "Rather Ripped" charted at number 64 on the UK Album Chart and at number 71 on the US Billboard Top 200. The album came 43rd in Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2006 and ranked third in Rolling Stone's Top 50 Albums of 2006. "Rather Ripped" was Sonic Youth's last studio album on Geffen. They dropped the label in 2008, and are now currently recording on Matador Records. Read more on Last.fm.

"The Eternal" is the sixteenth studio album by Sonic Youth, released by Matador Records on June 9, 2009, their first on that label. It was their first studio album in three years (since "Rather Ripped"), making it the band's longest delay between studio albums. The album peaked at #18 on the Billboard 200 and was the band's highest charting album of their career in the United States and highest charting album since 1994's "Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star", which reached #34. The album was released digitally, on CD, and as a double LP, in both a standard and a "Buy Early Get Now" (BEGN) edition. The cover art was painted by John Fahey. The album is dedicated to Ron Asheton. Read more on Last.fm.

2011 soundtrack recording from Sonic Youth. In the Spring of 2010, Sonic Youth gathered at their Echo Canyon West studio in Hoboken, New Jersey, to watch the roughs of a new film, Simon Werner a Disparu, by French director Fabrice Gobert. They spent the following few weeks recording music which was then shaped as needed to fit the various scenes. For this release, rather than present the small clips of music as used in the film, the band went back in the autumn to the original tapes and re-organized the various pieces for this original soundtrack release, sometimes montaging multiple tracks together, other times extending cues into new sonic realms. Read more on Last.fm.