Sonic Youth today announced that it finally will release a long-in-the-works archival, 14-track live album that was recorded on 4-track cassette on Aug. 11, 1985, at Chicago’s Smart Bar while the band was touring the U.S. in support of the the release earlier that year of the group’s second studio album, Bad Moon Rising.
Mixed and mastered by the band from the original tape, Smart Bar – Chicago 1985 will be released Nov. 14 via the band’s Goofin’ Records imprint on CD, 2LP and digital formats with liner notes by Gerard Cosloy and SY engineer Aaron Mullan and photos by Pat Blashill and Steven Koress.
As the band notes, the recording features much of the Bad Moon Rising LP, plus early performances of EVOL stand-outs “Expressway to Yr Skull” and “Secret Girl,” and a very rare performance of the song “Kat ‘n’ Hat,” which does not appear on any of the band’s releases and only wsa performed in the summer of 1985.
The Smart Bar live album was first announced by Sonic Youth in late 2010, and mentioned again by guitarist Lee Ranaldo in an interview earlier this summer, in which he promised several other archival projects, including a previously unseen concert film shot the following year and a possible deluxe-edition reissue of 1987′s Sister.
Today’s announcement doesn’t refer to any of those other projects, nor does it shed light on whether the band will continue in light of last year’s Kim Gordon-Thurston Moore split.
Tracklist: Sonic Youth, Smart Bar – Chicago 1985
1. “Hallowe’en”
2. “Death Valley ’69”
3. “Intro/Brave Men Run (In My Family)”
4. “I Love Her All The Time”
5. “Ghost Bitch”
6. “I’m Insane”
7. “Kat ‘N’ Hat”
8. “Brother James”
9. “Kill Yr Idols”
10. “Secret Girl”
11. “Flower”
12. “The Burning Spear”
13. “Expressway To Yr Skull”
14. “Making The Nature Scene”
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- Sonic Youth prepping ’85 live album, unseen ’86 concert film, possible ‘Sister’ reissue
- Video: Thurston Moore covers Rolling Stones, Lee Ranaldo covers Talking Heads
- Lee Ranaldo on Sonic Youth: ‘Somehow I can’t imagine it’s really the end of it’
- Video: Sonic Youth in Sao Paulo, Brazil — watch what could be band’s final concert
