Bad Moon Rising (album)

Background

Sonic Youth formed in New York City in 1981 with guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo and bassist Kim Gordon. After signing to Neutral Records and releasing the Sonic Youth EP in March 1982, the band issued Confusion Is Sex and Kill Yr. Idols in 1983, with several drummers coming and going. Bob Bert rejoined after the Confusion Is Sex tour in mid-1983.

The New York press largely ignored the band until a disastrous London debut in October 1983 received rave reviews in Sounds and NME; upon returning to New York, queues at CBGB went around the block. By mid-1984, the band played almost weekly but felt their approach had little future. They retuned their guitars and changed equipment to force new material. In September 1984, they entered Martin Bisi's BC Studio in Brooklyn, where Bisi had recorded early rappers and avant-garde musicians such as John Zorn, Elliott Sharp and Bill Laswell.

Music

Bad Moon Rising has been described as noise rock, no wave and experimental rock. The album opens with 'Intro', a short instrumental featuring several guitars, described as a melancholic, meowing slide line playing off a delicate stack of crystalline arpeggios. 'Intro' segues into 'Brave Men Run (In My Family)', which begins with a single riff repeating for a minute before Kim Gordon sings. The riff fades into 'Society Is a Hole', a one-chord hymn to big-city anomie.

Transitional pieces were inspired by live shows where Moore or Ranaldo tuned guitars for up to five minutes while the other played slow riffs or prerecorded sound collages. 'I Love Her All the Time' features extensive prepared guitar by Ranaldo and uses one chord with a noise section, focusing on texture and rhythm. The second side includes 'Ghost Bitch' (with Ranaldo on acoustic guitar referencing Native Americans' first encounter with European settlers), 'I'm Insane', and 'Justice is Might', expanding the soundscape concept with repeating guitar riffs that segue between songs. 'Death Valley '69', the closer, resulted from a collaboration between Moore and Lydia Lunch.

Critical reception

Robert Palmer of The New York Times ranked Bad Moon Rising as one of the year's ten best albums at number four, praising Sonic Youth for making startlingly original guitar-based music using cheap guitars and ordinary amplifiers. AllMusic noted the album's dark nature, calling it quite unlike any other in the Sonic Youth canon and capturing the band during its most morose phase. Trouser Press wrote that it exudes the horrible beauty of a mushroom cloud on the horizon.

Pitchfork described the aesthetic as compelling. Byron Coley of Spin wrote that it is an aural portrait less single-mindedly violent than its immediate precursors. The album ranked at number 42 in Alternative Press's list of the greatest albums of 1985–1995.

Did You Know?

• The album's cover is a photograph by James Welling of a scarecrow with a flaming jack-o'-lantern as its head.
• The band credited the studio as 'Before Christ Studio' on the album.