General impression: awesome, obviously Detailed review: Going into this, I predicted I’d give it a 4. Listening to it, I’m going back and forth between 4 and 5. Obviously it’s a masterpiece, and it’s one of the albums I have a decent amount of familiarity with going in. I’ve definitely listened to the whole thing at least 5 or 6 times and several tracks many more times, but it’s been many years since my last “Sonic Youth phase” and it’s really nice to go back to them. It’s funny, after listening to a lot of Thurston Moore solo albums (and being largely bored by them), I feel differently about the band lineup. Kim is the spiritual leader, but Ranaldo is I think my favorite. I don’t know what guitar parts are his, but I love his vocals and lyrics. Anyway, this album is incredible and a lot of that is the perfection of the production capturing the raucous, chaotic Sonic Youth sound in a studio context. I am still not sure if this is my favorite SY album…I’m very partial to Goo and Dirty, not to mention later albums like Murray St. and Sonic Nurse. But I cannot deny that this album deserves its reputation as Sonic Youth’s defining piece of work. Deeper thoughts (context): Despite the influence this album has clearly had on future generations of rock artists, I still don’t think anyone’s captured the same magic since them. Score: 4.6 (5 for this list) Number of albums left to review: 970 Number of albums from the list I’d consider “must-listens”: 18 (including this one) Albums from the list I won't include in mine: 13