than the last, has further refined the band's songwriting craft and chops, has expanded its range. Through it all, like Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding, they were "never known to make a foolish move."

The Youth were early, enthusiastic supporters of Nirvana and of the whole Seattle-centered guitar-grunge scene, so it's not surprising to find the band working with producer Butch Vig and mixer Andy Wallace of Nevermind fame on Dirty. It's the first time the band has used an outside producer, and it works, giving this eighth SY album added richness, clarity, punch and amp-static snarl as needed. It's more focused and harder hitting than Goo (1990), the band's last album and its Geffen debut, but the disc-to-disc development is well within previous SY parameters, not even as radical a jump as the one from Daydream Nation (1988) to Goo.

Oh, by the way, Dirty is a great Sonic Youth disc, easily ranking with Daydream Nation and Sister (1987) among the band's most unified and unforgettable recorded works. The aural "dirt" is one element that pulls the album together. Another is the thematic move away from the cyberpunk allegory of recent discs and squarely into a confrontation with life in America during a particularly scary election year. Sentiments along the lines of "I believe Anita Hill/The judge'll rot in hell" and "Yeah, the president sucks," from the coruscating "Youth Against Fascism," dovetail with the sexual-harassment issue addressed in the skronking head-clanger "Swimsuit Issue" and with the melodically haunting, ideologically devastating "Chapel Hill," a sharp retort to the geriatric politics of Jesse Helms and his ilk. The aura of insurgency provides a charged context for the disc's more personal songs, upping the intensity and the emotional stakes and fusing a collection of diverse tracks into a scorched and scorching whole. Dirty is a burner.

Between Sonic Youth projects, singer-guitarist Moore has gotten his own indie-label venture Ecstatic Peace off to an explosive start with Dim Stars, a major contemporary rock event in its own right. The Stars are Moore; SY drummer Steve Shelley; the criminally under-appreciated, multitalented Velvet Monkeys/B.A.L.L. alumnus Don Fleming on guitar, and most notably singer-lyricist Richard Hell – yes, the guy who, beginning in the mid-Seventies, forged jacked-up