HERE ARE THE SONICS

A facsimile release on 180g black vinyl in a thick card sleeve.

At the time of its original release, this album made very little impact outside of the Sonics’ home state – but the band made enough noise in Washington to blow down every brick wall between Tacoma and Torrance, California.

Seldom has a band been better named. The youthful aggression in their music – coupled with singer Gerry Roslie’s 80-razorblades-a-day vocal attack and a selection of overwhelmingly brilliant riffs that underpinned some of the most wildly recorded music ever to be committed to tape – should have made the Sonics one of the biggest bands the world has ever known or heard.

Instead they went on to become celebrated by generation after generation of collectors, and other young people with an urge to rock’n’roll. The importance of tracks such as ‘The Witch’, ‘Psycho’ and ‘Boss Hoss’ has provided a template for countless groups who’ve come up in their wake, and who have achieved a level of commercial success they could never have achieved without the inspiration of the Sonics – fellow Pacific North-Westerners Kurt Cobain’s Nirvana and their successor the Foo Fighters being, perhaps, the most obvious examples.

Incidentally, all the modern legal stuff – barcode, addresses and suchlike – is contained on a sticker, to make this reissue look as authentic as possible. (Ace Records)