Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beware, not the Sonic Youh you are familar with, January 11, 2004
I, like many others, discovered Sonic Youth after everyone telling me what a fantastic album "Daydream Nation" was and then buying it. While it took some getting used to, I finally got to liking it and think it's their best album I have heard. I started to buy the other classic albums like "Dirty" and "Sister." A Friend who was a fan of Sonic Youth told me about this album and how it would be like nothing I had ever heard before. At the time, I couldn't imagine Sonic Youth being any more experimental or loud than I had heard before. Wow, the first few times I put "Confusion Is Sex/Kill Yr. Idols" on, I was very scared and turned it off. It is very experimental, loud, dark, moody, raw, everything against what music is suppose to be and yet it is listenable. I have since gotten used to the album and I can listen to it when I'm in a dark mood. You should be warned that this album is very raw and experimental and many will not like it, so you should listen to it before you buy it. It is amazing to hear where Sonic Youth came from and see where they are now. "Confusion Is Sex/Kill Yr. Idols" is not Sonic Youth's best album by any means but if you fancy ear-blistering noise and experimentation and dark moody lyrics, then this your ticket. If you'd rather have more structure and tunefullness, then check out later day Sonic Youth albums.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Fiercest record in the SY canon. , July 29, 2004
On the surface, Sonic Youth's debut LP Confusion Is Sex/Kill Yr. Idols is little more than amateurish noise. The guitars are oddly tuned, producing an ungodly racket on the order of the Velvet Underground classic Sister Ray, except even MORE abrasive. The production is harsh--I've heard bands recorded on 8-tracks in a garage that sound lusher than this. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore's vocals alternate between barely discernible whispers and obtuse screams. For those acclimated to friendly Top-40 music, listening to this will be a frightening experience.
I think Craig Luft described the album best with his 7/12/03 review: "This album's strength is that it would rather sound interesting than sound good. The music is like colorful garbage artfully thrown upon yr. lawn." Precisely.
Back in '83, Sonic Youth were a gaggle of cynical no-wave punks who gleefully set out to destroy virtually any musical convention they could. Whereas feedback and noise experiments on later albums like Sister and Daydream Nation kinda drone along, Confusion Is Sex/Kill Yr. Idols uses the noises to eviscerate your eardrums. The lyrics are dark, moody, and very beat poetry-like, evoking some truly scary and bizarre imagery ("people with fish eyes"...yikes). Kim's normally awful voice actually works pretty well in this context--could you picture anyone else singing the creepy Protect Me You or disturbing Shaking Hell? Their cover of The Stooges' I Wanna Be Your Dog rips, and Kill Yr. Idols, Confusion Is Next, and Brother James all shred wallpaper at three miles.
This isn't the same bunch of 40-somethings that recorded Murray Street, that's for sure. Confusion Is Sex/Kill Yr. Idols is definitely an acquired taste, but if you seek an album perfectly suitable for fraternity hazing ceremononies, breaking stuff, playing on Halloween to scare the hell out of children, or simply need an excursion from the usual indie pop this is the record you've been looking for.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A brave and abrasive beginning, November 15, 2004
Confusion Is Sex is Sonic Youths first full length album and its' most self-conscious attempt at creating an avant garde musical aesthetic or art. Song form is deconstructed if not entirely eshewed for abrasive, oftimes atonal experiments in harmonics and texture. Nobody was playing music like this at the time with the possible exception of new music composers Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham. But both Chatham and Branca were much more formal in their approach to harmonic rock oriented experimentation and less chaotic or improvisational. Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo's tenure with Glenn Branca's rock and roll harmonic symphony outfit (or whatever you want to call it) shows in the odd tunings and willingness to explore noise for its own sake found throughout Confusion Is Sex. By comparison and temperament/intent, Branca is an academic, while Sonic Youth are the punk rock barbarians at the gate of new music. The Youth took what they would from more "serious" composers and brought those lessons into a tribal, raw, rock, and ironically self-conscious context. The lyrics are often chanted rather than sung, the drums pound and the guitars screech, moan and float with the excitement and energy of punk rock, punk rock with a brain and an overarching delight in sound behind the seeming chaos. There's an immediacy and charming rawness to the overall sound of Confusion is Sex due to the sometimes awful recording quality, high fidelity this isn't. This is art dammit not pop fluff designed for mass commercial appeal.
The bonus EP "Kill Yr. Idols" included in this set is no less experimental in texture, yet is perhaps a bit more song oriented and conventional in its overall structure, well some of it is. Overall it sounds a bit more like the Sonic Youth we came to know on Bad Moon or EVOL. It's also recorded better. This first album/EP package is not for the casual listener: its challenging, abrasive, poorly recorded, but has a kind of ugly beauty about it. Confusion is Sex is one of the most experimental and least accesible albums of Sonic Youth's career, and I find it very rewarding for it reminds me of the amazing possibilities inherent in music and the joy that comes from pushing the limits of art.
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by Sonic Youth 
