Full title: Dirty (w/ Mike Kelly photograph).

Personnel: Thurston Moore, Lee Renaldo (vocals, guitars), Kim Gordon (vocals, bass), Steve Shelley (drums).

Additional personnel: Ian MacKaye (guitar).

Recorded at Magic Shop, New York City.

This is a limited edition release containing a Mike Kelly photograph visible through a see-through tinted tray.

Includes a bonus disc with additional B-sides and rehearsal tapes. Also includes a 28-page booklet.

Sonic Youth: Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley.

Additional personnel: Ian MacKaye.

Includes liner notes by Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Byron Coley.

Producers: Butch Vig, Sonic Youth.

Personnel: Thurston Moore (vocals, guitar); Kim Gordon (vocals); Ian MacKaye, Lee Ranaldo (guitar); Steve Shelley (drums).

Audio Mixers: Andy Wallace; Butch Vig.

Recording information: Magic Shop, New York, NY (1992); Sear Sound, New York, NY (1992).

Sonic Youth's second major-label album, produced and mixed by Butch Vig and Andy Wallace (a team that had helped turn Nirvana's NEVERMIND multi-platinum) was not the barefaced bid for mainstream acceptance that surly underground souls grumbled about in the pages of fanzines. While Vig and Wallace give guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, bassist Kim Gordon, and phenomenal drummer Steve Shelley a wide-screen panorama for their bizarrely-tuned assaults, DIRTY is probably Sonic Youth's most uncompromising album since 1985's BAD MOON RISING--particularly in the lyrical department.

Dropping the deliberate obscurantism, Philip K. Dick references, and smart-alecky snottiness, Sonic Youth brackets a slew of pointed political attacks ("Youth Against Fascism," "Swimsuit Issue," and the Jesse Helms-bashing "Chapel Hill") with two passionate tributes to the band members' murdered friend, Joe Cole ("100%" and "JC"). That DIRTY is Sonic Youth's most commercial-sounding album makes it that much more subversive.