Dirty Boots

Sonic Youth's "Dirty Boots" opens 1990's *Goo* with a slow-burning detonation: a clean guitar figure circles for nearly a minute before the band crashes into full-throttle distortion. This is the more accessible, almost anthemic face of Sonic Youth's noise-rock — the alternate tunings still smear the chords into queasy overtones, but Thurston Moore's drawled, half-shouted vocal carries genuine warmth. The song captures young romantic restlessness, two kids working up the nerve to acknowledge an attraction ("I've got some dirty boots / dirty 'cause I love you"), the bravado a flimsy shield over real tenderness. Steve Shelley's drums drive hard while the twin guitars of Moore and Lee Ranaldo build squalling, feedback-laced cathedrals that nonetheless resolve into hooks. Arriving as alternative rock crossed into the mainstream, it bridged the band's downtown-NYC art-noise lineage with the coming grunge wave — proof you could be abrasive and catchy at once. Listen on a night drive with the windows down, or whenever you want the specific rush of guitars that sound like they're tearing free of their own structure, ecstatic and unresolved, scuffed boots stomping toward someone you haven't worked up the courage to touch.