1 of 16 
16. Sonic Youth (1982): Originally released on Glenn Branca's Neutral label and the only Sonic Youth album to feature original drummer Richard Edson, the band's debut sounds like the dark, post-punk cousin of Thurston's spunky new wave band The Coachmen. Punk mostly in the temporal sense, the songs force-feed jangle to dissonance, occasionally sounding like a more melodic (though not much more) Public Image Limited. Though almost unrecognizable from the Sonic Youth we know today, Sonic Youth nevertheless remains a decent if inauspicious debut that offers a fleeting glimpse of what was to come. It's also fitting that the cassette version of the first album by a band that would become synonymous with experimentation features the entire program repeated on side 2 –- in reverse.
