Dirty and Slanted: How 1992 Changed Rock

Pavement circa 1992, image sourced from https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/pavement-slanted-and-enchanted-album-indie-masterpiece-7767802/

The year is 1992: twelve years before I was born, a presidential election year and leap year, and (as I am legally obligated to say) a year after Nirvana released Nevermind. I arrived at college about nine months too late to sneak a piece into the Orpheus Review about the 30th anniversary of the grunge explosion, but what’s there to say about Nevermind that hasn’t been said? It’s a fantastic album, sure, but I’m here to talk about two bands and their 1992 releases that represent a different side of the alt-rock community that was emerging at the time. Pavement’s debut studio album Slanted and Enchanted and Sonic Youth’s Dirty were released within six months of each other in 1992, and they both imprinted forever on the scene. Influence from the 80s underground hardcore (Minor Threat, Minutemen, the Replacements) as well as the push to commercialize (R.E.M, the Smashing Pumpkins) must have been at the forefront of their minds when writing, recording, and releasing these albums. We could sit and argue for hours about whether Sonic Youth “sold out” by signing David Geffen to produce Goo and Dirty or how noble Pavement is for staying signed to indie labels throughout their tenure. These are important things to discuss, especially in the 90s, but the songs should speak for themselves. Integrity means nothing if nobody wants to listen. 

These albums both also hold a special place in my musical journey as a young, slightly annoying teenager. They represent opposite sides of the 90s rock spectrum and distinct parts of my life and taste as well. Dirty was recommended by my dad and Slanted and Enchanted was from one of my best friends from high school. They get along pretty well in real life but musically they diverge. My dad can’t stand Pavement and rolls his eyes whenever I mention them and my friend has admitted to me multiple times that, despite trying, Sonic Youth has never done much for her. Meanwhile I implore both of them to give the other a chance. More than anything, these are two deeply emotional albums. Dirty features multiple tributes to dead friends of the band while Malkmus sings on Slanted about ruined relationships and the finiteness of life. So hopefully this article will be a nudge to them to give these bands a second chance. 

Sonic Youth circa 1992, image sourced from: https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2015/09/08/sonic-youth-brixton-academy-london-december-14-1992/

I don’t know what provoked my dad to get up from the dinner table one night, walk to the (slightly) messy cabinet that held our CD collection, pick out Sonic Youth’s Dirty, and hand it to me but I can only thank him now. Who knew that my dad, the guy who spent his Friday nights at chamber music concerts and his Sunday afternoons reading The New York Review of Books and drinking tea, liked this kind of music? (My mom does too, for the record, but it takes more for her to admit that she used to listen to Sleater-Kinney and Throwing Muses.) Along with Dirty, my dad showed me Goo, an earlier David Geffen project with the band, Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, and Veruca Salt’s American Thighs. I was probably ten or eleven years old and I remember being completely turned off by the opening track to Dirty, “100%.” It was raucous and screechy and sounded like nothing I had ever heard before. My musical diet at the time consisted mainly of Fleetwood Mac and the Beatles so stepping into the art rock world was a big step and I still hadn’t finished growing. But years later, I revisited Dirty and while it’s not a perfect album, it gets the job done and more.

Released in July of 1992, Dirty represents Sonic Youth’s full-on commitment to being listenable. Many a “true” SY fan will scoff at this and continue to defend Confusion is Sex or Evol until they’re blue in the face. But if any band benefitted from a producer telling them that their songs can’t be more than 7 minutes long and that there is such a thing as too much feedback, it was Sonic Youth. Giving guitarist/vocalist Thurston Moore free rein can be epic at times (see “The Diamond Sea” on Washing Machine, coming in at a whopping 19 minutes long) but there’s only so much that I have the patience for. So Moore, along with Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo, and Steve Shelley, teamed up with Butch Vig, high off producing Nevermind (Cobain rears his head again in this article), to make a solid double-album. Miraculously, none of the songs exceed six minutes in length, showing that Sonic Youth can be balanced when they want to. They also solidify their connection to the 80s indie scene by featuring Fugazi and Minor Threat stalwart Ian MacKaye on “Youth Against Fascism” as well as covering his brother Alec MacKaye’s band, The Untouchables, with “Nic Fit”. Sonic Youth does not break its allegiance to the artsy rock, holds down its relationship with the previous decade’s hardcore community, and produces a well-rounded album. 

I started listening to Pavement in the beginning of high school when one of my best friends at the time, the girl who should be credited for getting me into rock music, told me to listen to Quarantine the Past, the band’s master compilation. We were sitting in our American history class and talking about music. I was trying my hardest to keep up but I’d never heard of Pavement or Dinosaur Jr. or Neutral Milk Hotel (that one was a big problem but the Anne Frank of it all turned me off for years). I still remember listening to the compilation for the first time and asking her, “What about the rest of it?” She replied, “This is all the good stuff, I promise, you don’t need to mess around with the albums.” I didn’t know any better at the time and I worshiped the ground she walked on, so I stuck to what she said and religiously listened to Quarantine for the next couple of weeks. To be fair, it’s a great compilation tape and a good way to get into Pavement, the self proclaimed “last psychedelic band.” I also think she has now come around to actually listening to the albums. After the compilation, I listened to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, their most commercially successful record that features “Cut Your Hair” and “Range Life”, where Malkmus directly calls out the Smashing Pumpkins, incurring the wrath of Billy Corgan. It was only after a few years that I really listened to their debut, Slanted and Enchanted. For a band that is frequently accused of nonsensical, unemotional, and pretentious lyrics, Slanted proves everyone wrong. Malkmus is quoted as saying that Slanted, “probably is the best record we made, only because it's less self-conscious and has an unrepeatable energy about it.” “Zürich is Stained”, my original favorite on the album, describes someone who refuses to hold themselves accountable for a ruined relationship; far more willing to blame the other person, despite the fact that they were the one who stayed. 

Having music recommended to you by someone forever solidifies their presence in your life, even years later. To this day, Malkmus’ crooning on Slanted takes me back to that freshman year history class. As I got older, I spent less time listening to music with my dad but hearing “Purr” or “Drunken Butterfly” still reminds me of standing next to him on a crowded train with one of his headphones in my ear, holding on for dear life. Something special happens when someone recommends a record to you. Even if it’s just a compilation tape. Dirty and Slanted and Enchanted, whether I knew it or even liked them during the first listen, changed my musical life forever and I hope that whoever is reading this right now will give these two incredible albums a listen and create your own set of memories with them.