Confusion Is Sex

The goal of this page is to facilitate critical understanding of Sonic Youth's 1983 LP Confusion is Sex.



Lyrics to Confusion is Sex .

Production notes.

Excerpts from Greil Marcus' "Gulliver Speaks," reprinted from Artforum (11.83). A must-read for theory heads, probing Confusion's "burden of negation."

Greil Marcus muses about the Youth during the days of Confusion (from Addicted to Noise 8/97).

A piece by Leigh Marble titled "'Shaking Hell': Exploding Pop Music." This explores how the song "Shaking Hell" functions within Theodor Adorno's categories of pop vs. serious music.

Confusion is Sex page by Yuri Landman, guitar builder for Sonic Youth and others (original is gone, but text is preserved in the Wayback Machine archive).

Related Critical Works:

Sam Jeffries' piece "Theodor Adorno Meets 'Lo-Fi'." He examines the lo-fi aesthetic in light of Adorno's views on pop music, materiality, and artistic self-awareness, specifically examining albums by The Dead C and Love As Laughter.

Jeff Schwartz's piece on the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray." A good example of a modern critical approach, focusing on reading the musical work as "text."

Mark Amerika's treatise on Avant-Pop, a new critical framework which presents some new possibilities for critical understanding of Sonic Youth's music.

Site bibliography.



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