Rather Ripped is a much under-appreciated album. It doesn't have the depth of the albums that surrounded it, but depth isn't the point - criticising an album with Reena and Incinerate on it for lacking depth is like criticising Confusion is Sex for being not being accessible enough. RR is a modern guitar pop classic to my ears, has that clever trick of sounding throwaway on first listen, but then by the time you realise you've played it 3 times through on a loop you realise that there's something more subtle at work... Pink Steam is as good a track as they've recorded in the last decade, too.
Also, wasn't it nice, in amongst the skronk-jazz side projects, ambient noise cassette-only sound collage type stuff, to have a nice shiny disc of Sonic Youth having fun? Just for a change?
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