Confusion Is Sex

Confusion is Sex is Sonic Youth’s first full-length studio album, released in 1983 on Glenn Branca’s Neutral Records.

At this point in their history, Sonic Youth had a rather complicated relationship with their drummers. When Richard Edson left, they tacked up drummer-wanted fliers around town, a request which only one person answered. His name was Bob Bertelli, but he’d shortened it to Bob Bert. Bert was a heavy-handed rock drummer who’d been out of practice for years before the no wave scene inspired him to pick up his instrument again. As a result, he was rather sloppy and unskilled in the beginning—however, the band liked his primitive style, so he was in.

Soon, the band embarked on a tour of the midwest with Swans (one they called “Savage Blunder”). It was a short, tense, poorly-attended affair. Relations between the two bands, congenial at first, grew quite strained by the end, thanks in no small part to Swans frontman Michael Gira’s confrontational, authoritarian ways. Bert in particular found the trip to be a unique ordeal; a non-smoker, he spent countless hours driving from stop to stop in the poorly-ventilated van as both bands smoked copiously. Plus, his skills were slipping behind as he frequently struggled to keep up with the band onstage. The group grew frustrated with him and shortly after finishing the first leg of the tour, Bert was fired over the phone by Gordon.

After one more false start, the band settled on Jim Sclavunos as Bert’s replacement. Sclavunos had quite a bit more technical finesse than Bert did (though he certainly didn’t share the band’s admiration for hardcore punk).

The band was eager to get the followup to their first EP recorded, but funds from Neutral were stuck in limbo. The band, thankfully, managed to befriend a wealthy Swiss couple who gave them a sizable loan to begin the sessions. Ranaldo found the studio, owned by Wharton Tiers (a friend of his who’d drummed for Rhys Chatham, who’d convinced his landlord to let him build a makeshift studio in the basement). The shoestring-budget studio, dubbed “Fun City,” gave the sessions a ramshackle, lo-fi quality that really brings out the crude, savage passion inherent in this material.

The original plan was to record a single for the song “Confusion is Next”—then Glenn Branca heard the results and promptly gave Sonic Youth the go-ahead to make a full-length album. Said Thurston Moore of the sessions::

For my money, that was our purest record, in a way. We did it cheap and fast and it captured the sound we had and where we were emotionally.

However, tensions grew once again as Sclavunos failed to capture the savage ferocity the rest of the band had admired in Bert. During the recording of “Making the Nature Scene”, the band grew frustrated again and briefly entertained re-hiring Bert. Sclavunos (on edge as it is thanks to a worsening problem with speed and acid) took serious offense at that suggestion and stormed out of the studio, quitting the band—thus, Bob Bert was re-hired. The band kept him on through the sessions… then for a couple of shows. Then, a couple of shows turned into a European tour and Bert was in for the long run.

The album was released in February 1983 to a largely indifferent critical reaction, which rather irked the band. The consensus seems to have warmed a bit over the years, though, with Allmusic proclaiming it “a cornerstone of Sonic Youth’s career [and] their true opening salvo toward underground heroism.”