More Sonic Youth Reissues, New LP Details Emerge

Come March 14, a certain portrait of a fledgling Sonic Youth goes back up on the mantle, as the band's self-titled debut mini-album is available again at last, in a snazzy remastered frame.

In the process it looks like Mama Geffen's also drudged up a relic of SY's riotous teenage days, as well as a shot of Thurston Moore alone in the wilderness wearing a magic-markered t-shirt that reads "Psychic Hearts." Those two gems, respectively: The Whitey Album, a deconstructionist pop mélange released under the guise of Ciccone Youth in 1989, and Psychic Hearts, Moore's out-of-print 1995 solo trek. Each will also get the remastered treatment March 14.

While only containing five tracks and clocking in at well under the thirty-minute mark, the band consider Sonic Youth their first proper album. For the reissue, Geffen has dolled it up with seven live tracks recorded in September 1981 and a pre-album demo recording of "Where the Red Fern Grows", which later became "I Dreamed I Dream".

Sonic Youth:

01 The Burning Spear
02 I Dreamed I Dream
03 She Is Not Alone
04 I Don't Want to Push It
05 The Good and the Bad
06 Hard Work [Live]
07 Where the Red Fern Grows [Live]
08 The Burning Spear [Live]
09 Cosmopolitan Girl [Live]
10 Loud and Soft [Live]
11 Destroyer [Live]
12 She Is Not Alone [Live]
13 Where The Red Fern Grows [Demo]

Sonic Youth went all out to record The Whitey Album, adopting the Ciccone pseudonym and bestowing wack-ass carnival names upon the players. For all intents and purposes, the disc was created by The Royal Tuff Titty (Moore), SS Beat Control (drummer Steve Shelley), The Sigh (guitarist Lee Ranaldo), and Fly Fly Away (Kim Gordon), and features contributions from Mike Watt (of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE) and J. Mascis (Dinosaur Jr.).

Definitely the weirdest chapter in SY's history, The Whitey Album includes two Madonna covers, a Robert Palmer cover, a track of complete silence, Thurston Moore rapping, Lee Ranaldo reciting poetry (which you might recognize from that Chicken Lips remix), Kim Gordon chatting with a friend, and all sorts of other experiments.

The Whitey Album:

01 Needle-Gun
02 (silence)
03 G-Force
04 Platoon II
05 Macbeth
06 Me & Jill/Hendrix Crosby
07 Burnin' Up
08 Hi! Everybody!
09 Children of Satan/Third Fig
10 Two Cool Rock Chicks Listening to Neu
11 Addicted to Love
12 Moby-Dik
13 March of the Ciccone Robots
14 Making the Nature Scene
15 Tuff Titty Rap
16 Into the Groovey

And finally, there's Psychic Hearts, which Moore recorded with Shelley and guitarist Tim Foljahn, with some input from Ranaldo. Cat Power covered the title track once. Check it:

Psychic Hearts:

01 Queen Bee and Her Pals
02 Ono Soul
03 Psychic Hearts
04 Pretty Bad
05 Patti Smith Math Scratch
06 Blues From Beyond the Grave
07 See-Through Play/Mate
08 Hang Out
09 Feathers
10 Tranquilizer
11 Staring Statues
12 Cindy (Rotten Tanx)
13 Cherry's Blues
14 Female Cop
15 Elegy for All the Dead Rock Stars

As previously reported, SY are presently hard at work on the follow-up to 2004's Sonic Nurse. Moore disclosed to CMJ.com recently that the band have settled on the title Do You Believe in Rapture?, with a tentative June release date.

"This record is just a far more straight up rock and roll album for us," he said. "I think the last few albums we've done, especially with Jim O'Rourke in the band, were much more complex just because there was another musical element into the band. The music [had] sort of a darker, twisted, complex quality to it."

Moore continued, "Kim is back to rocking the bass, I'm singing like six songs, she's singing on five, Lee is singing on one, which is sort of a classic kind of set up for us. The songs are real straight up. I wanted to write songs that were going to be straight forward enough for everybody to plug into immediately."

"[Rapture is] definitely a super song record. It's rockers and ballads."

Our crystal Moore orb tells us TM will appear at No Fun Fest with Leslie Keffer and reportedly at SXSW, although sadly his College Girls Gone Wild project was forced to cancel its appearance at April's Terrastock Festival 6 in wild Rhode Island, due to "an unavoidable commitment", according to the festival website. Spring break in Cozumel, obvs!

I want Moore:

03-19 Brooklyn, NY - The Hook *
* with No Neck Blue Band, Borbetomagus, Astromero, John Wiese, Prurient, Fat Worm of Error, Shackamaxon, Eloe Omoe

Sonic Youth: http://www.sonicyouth.com/