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"Twister, Dustbuster, Hospital Bed, I'll see you, see you, see you on the Highway!"

Seldom is it said by anyone but me, so I suppose I'm in the minority...but this is my article so I'm thrilled to be able to announce that Washing Machine is unequivocally the most mercurial, transcendent, emotional, surreal thing in the Sonic Youth catalog so far. It takes me places Daydream Nation cannot. "Junkie's Promise" indirectly addresses Cobain's death, "Saucer Like" echoes The Byrds' 'Eight Miles High' in its gliding overview of New York City, "Washing Machine" trips out of its spiky psychosis in to a blissful epiphany, Thurston's lullaby "Unwind" hums lusciously like the space between dreams in a summer field while the maintaining the level of malevolence inherent within the album as a whole, "Skip Tracer" sounds like the song God plays to you when your soul spills out of your head on a City sidewalk and "The Diamond Sea" is. …

"Kids cruise away, pack of chickenshits
This guy is ours, dark stains on his pants
Enough to make a butcher out of the bone Take a walk in the park? Shit, yeah!"

It's easy to let Indie idealism get the better of you when reflecting on Sonic Youth's back catalog - and where better for it to settle than on their double LP, and last before signing to a major label. For those of us lucky enough to have fallen in love with its four sides of vinyl Daydream Nation is crystallized as the epitome of everything Sonic Youth represented and were best at. "Teen Age Riot" comes across as though they decided to write a musical explanation of their name. While the songs are sometimes abrasive, the production is austere and each song perfectly grounded, each existing in the same beige space as though lit simply by the cover's sole candle, yet somehow as it unfolds it manages to transcend everything, until part three (or c.) of "Trilogy," "Eliminator Jr. …

As is to be expected from a band as long lastingly idiosyncratic as Sonic Youth, their birth was not an easy thing. Confusion Is Sex is sparse and brooding, shot-through with the screeching molestation of electric guitar that would underpin their sound for the duration of their career. Cultured in the shadow of avant garde guitarist Glenn Branca, in whose band Lee Ranaldo learned his trade, their first album proper is also steeped in the ambient experimentation of their No Wave influences, and cuts a twisted figure. When at 1:38 into the ominous drone of "freezer burn" a cover of The Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog" smashes through, scaring the bejeesus out of you, it's as though this juxtaposition is a formula for everything to come.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPlhRmRLxeU

1. Bikini Kill - The CD Version of the First Two Records
2. Lush - Spooky
3. Saint Etienne - Foxbase Alpha
4. Sonic Youth - Dirty
5. Pale Saints - In Ribbons
6. Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine
7. Catherine Wheel - Ferment
8. Death in June - But What Ends When the Symbols Shatter?
9. Ministry - Psalm 69
10. Mary J. Blige - What's the 411?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJNGvaeS9n0

11. In the Nursery - Duality
12. SWV - It's About Time
13. EPMD - Business Never Pleasure
14. Medicine - Shot Forth Self Living
15. Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92
16. The Jesus & Mary Chain - Honey's Dead
17. Cranes - Self-Non-Self
18. Beastie Boys - Check Your Head
19. Michael Jackson - Dangerous
20. Kitchens of Distinction - The Death of Cool

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JqWNDmUMCE

1. The Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die (Best Album of the Decade...Possibly of All Time)
2. Nas - Illmatic
3. Portishead - Dummy
4. Wu-Tang Clan - Enter The Wu-Tang - 36 Chambers
5. Bark Psychosis - Hex
6. Slowdive - Souvlaki
7. Failure - Magnified
8. Lush - Split
9. Saint Etienne - Tiger Bay
10. The Future Sound of London - Lifeforms

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fm2uV0Tpts

11. Massive Attack - Protection
12. Hole - Live Through This
13. Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
14. Bratmobile - The Real Janelle EP
15. Method Man - Tical
16. Beastie Boys - Ill Communication
17. Bailter Space - Vortura
18. Bikini Kill - Pussy Whipped
19. Nurse With Wound - Acts of Senseless Beauty
20. Common - Resurrection

Also:

blink-182 - Cheshire Cat
Jawbox - For Your Own Special Sweetheart
Pulp - His 'n' Hers
Rancid - Let's Go
Rodan - Rusty
Scarface - The Diary
Sonic Youth - Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esEdC0c3YI4

1. Garbage - Garbage
2. Mobb Deep - The Infamous
3. GZA - Liquid Swords
4. Tricky - Maxinquaye
5. Death in June - Rose Clouds of Holocaust
6. KMFDM - Nihil
7. Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return to the 36 Chambers
8. Oval - 94 Diskont
9. Pulp - Different Class
10. Björk - Post

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP0wsET8__Y

11. Aphex Twin - I Care Because You Do
12. AZ - Doe or Die
13. Big L - Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous
14. Excuse 17 - Such Friends Are Dangerous
15. Moloko - Do You Like My Tight Sweater?
16. Aghast - Hexerei Im Zweilicht Der Finst
17. Radiohead - The Bends
18. Hum - You'd Prefer An Astronaut
19. A.F.I. - Answer That and Stay Fashionable
20. Scorn - Gyral

Also:

The Boyd Rice Experience - Hatesville!
Emily's Sassy Lime - Desperate, Scared, but Social
Kronos Quartet - Kronos Quartet Performs Philip Glass
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx
…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-CHEnJ7gnc

1. Garbage - Version 2.0
2. Massive Attack - Mezzanine
3. Rasputina - How We Quit the Forest
4. Esthero - Breath From Another
5. Black Star - Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star
6. Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children
7. Jay-Z - Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life
8. PJ Harvey - Is This Desire?
9. Pati Yang - Jaszczurka
10. Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over the Sea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85E9Q5Wx210

11. VAST - Visual Audio Sensory Theater
12. Sonic Youth - A Thousand Leaves
13. At the Drive-In - In/Casino/Out
14. Bikini Kill - The Singles
15. Elliott Smith - XO
16. Caustic Window - Compilation
17. Marilyn Manson - Mechanical Animals
18. Dead Can Dance - A Passage In Time
19. Cat Power - Moon Pix
20. Hole - Celebrity Skin

Also:

Cap'n'Jazz - Analphabetapolothology
Cradle Of Filth - Cruelty and the Beast
Haus Arafna - Children of God
I Am Spoonbender - Sender-Receiver
Illusion of Safety - Bad Karma
Imogen Heap - I-Megaphone
…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=617ANIA5Rqs

1. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
2. The Knife - Silent Shout
3. Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton - Knives Don't Have Your Back
4. Joanna Newsom - Ys
5. S.I.N.A - Nie Und Immer
6. The Lawrence Arms - Oh! Calcutta!
7. Burial - Burial
8. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale / More Fish
9. The Ditty Bops - Moon Over the Freeway
10. J Dilla - Donuts / The Shining

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq-jEHZ-EFc

11. Converge - No Heroes
12. Android Lust - Devour, Rise and Take Flight
13. Cicada - Cicada
14. Genevieve Pasquier - Virgin Pulses
15. Tim Hecker - Harmony In Ultraviolet
16. Lemuria - Your Living Room's All Over Me
17. Maja Ratkje - Adventura Anatomica
18. Fe-mail - Blixter Toad
19. Li Alin - All In
20. The Vibration - Amarilla

These were also extremely good:

Air France - On Trade Winds
Alaska - Arctic Foundations
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black
Asobi Seksu - Citrus
Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit
Black Sun Empire - Cruel & Unusual
…