Available again on 2xlp!! Sonic Youth’s eponymous debut 12-inch was recorded in late 1981 at Plaza Sound at Radio City Music Hall in NYC and originally released on composer Glenn Branca’s Neutral label. This remastered and expanded double vinyl and CD reissue includes the self-titled debut record plus live material from '81 and a track from a previously unheard studio session (and remains the only recorded document of an early line-up featuring actor Richard Edson on drums). Includes liner notes by original Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson, Glenn Branca and Byron Coley. The first Sonic Youth EP - originally released on Glenn Branca's Neutral imprint - sits alongside the Sonic Death cassette and the Kill Yr Idols LP as some of the group's most evocatively blasted work. Listened to with modern ears it's immediately remarkable just how fully-formed the Sonic Youth sound was, even as early as their first quartet gig - included here in its entirety on disc two. The complex interlocking webs of dissonant guitars are as distinctive as ever - even when rendered via conventional tuning - and the automatic/somnabulant delivery of the lyrics is every bit as zoned as on later tracks from Evol and Bad Moon Rising. There's still a fair bit of new wave damage in the way the bass works melodic runs around the guitars and even a hint of Velvets-via-Television in the locked combinations of chords but it's really impossible to mistake this for anyone else, even at this, supposedly nascent, stage. This great upgraded edition includes the whole of the debut LP (originally released March 1982) as well as the first gig from September 1981, a studio outtake, a gatefold sleeve with lots of great early snaps and fliers and killer sleeve notes from Byron Coley and first drummer Richard Edson who recalls leaving Sonic Youth for, uh, the "Funky-groovelectric-Afro-Latin dance and party band" Konk. They thought Sonic Youth were "squares". Doh! - David Keenan Tracklist The Original Record (Released March 1982) A1 The Burning Spear 3:24A2 I Dreamed I Dream 5:14A3 She Is Not Alone 4:02B1 I Don't Want To Push It 3:31B2 The Good And The Bad 7:49 Early Live (September 18, 1981) C1 Hard Work 3:19C2 Where The Red Fern Grows 5:47C3 The Burning Spear 3:23C4 Cosmopolitan Girl 3:35C5 Loud And Soft 6:48D1 Destroyer 5:32D2 She Is Not Alone 3:29 Early Studio (October 1981) D3 Where The Red Fern Grow 6:45
