Reviews of new releases from Sonic Youth, Lard, and the Dread Kennedys   Dread Kennedys (Various Artists) In Dub We Trust (Invisible) Lard 70's Rock Must Die EP (Alternative Tentacles) Of related interest: Dead Kennedys, Ministry, AC/DC, Jello for President (New York Green Party) Though you wouldn't know it in the clique-torn '90s, when punk rock first began simmering on Britain's rearmost cultural hotplate, dub and punk were often tossed in the same pot--they shared a spiritual bond that transcended their seemingly opposed musical values. Therefore, it's not theoretically impure to give the 20-year-old hardcore formula of benchmark San Fran punks the Dead Kennedys a sci-fi techno spin, as the various dub artists operating under the name Dread Kennedys do. If anything, using the latest hardware to upgrade the DKs' sonic model should make their music more relevant in the 21st century. In Dub We Trust, however, commits one simple, fatal error: Jello Biafra's lyrics need no such updating--jocks are still glorified thugs, all religions still suck, and Nazi punks still need to fuck off. Yet the tracks on this well-intentioned tribute either drown the words in a distorted soup or electronically boil them away altogether, leaving little but a disconnected riff with which to recognize the original song. After all, "Holiday in Cambodia" (here manipulated by Pigface and Beat Master Crash), "California Über Alles" (Sheep on Drugs) or "Chemical Warfare" (Subgenius and Jared Louche) are more than a collection of chords and melodies; they're cagey political commentaries wherein the message supersedes the medium. Wordless dub mixes--no matter how ingenious--could never achieve the same impact. So while these creative recontextualizations are certainly worth a listen, follow the liner notes' suggestion: Buy the originals first and bow to the masters. Biafra, to his credit, also throws off the shackles of the past on Lard's three-song EP 70's Rock Must Die. In this hysterically on-target parody, he characteristically employs both snide sarcasm and direct criticism to smack down those who currently offend him--in this case, new-school cock-rockers and the retro zeitgeist that allows them to proliferate. Over a strutting cowbell beat and a cheesy Al Jourgensen chunk-rawk guitar riff, Biafra wails about the Me Decade's "bogus bands, plastic rock stars/stupid clothes and the worst-made cars" and suggests we "lock the Bee Gees in a Pinto/ and ram it from the rear." Never afraid to alienate his own followers, he decries punks who want to return to '77, griping that the "underground's becoming an alternative joke." Leave it to Jello to be the one laughing loudest. Won't you join him in his malicious merriment? John Graham   Sonic Youth Goodbye 20th Century (Sonic Youth Records) Of related interest: Boredoms, Yoko Ono, Sonic Death, existentialism This is an album only Sonic Youth, unfaltering harbinger of the sharp edge, could get away with releasing: It's pretentious, presumptuous, abrasive and incredible. Strutting the cusp of the underground and free-falling experimental mania as the band has for nearly two decades, Sonic Youth continues to knead and tweak its definition of music into a fascinating barrage of anomalous aural ectoplasm. Symphonic versions of the skinny compositions and futuristic death tomes of experimental visionaries like John Cage, Takehisa Kosugi, Steve Reich and Christian Wolff are so riveting you will wonder why standard radio verse-chorus drivel still appeals to anyone. Tape loops and odd time signatures, hammers and pianos and the sounds of wee Coco Hayley Gordon Moore screeching Yoko Ono's fabulous "Vocal Piece for Soprano" are somehow chaotic, pounding and organic without betraying their original aesthetic. 20th Century (the album's clutch of experimental covers, like the Ono tidbit, were composed mostly in the '60s and '70s) does not stray from the notion that music is a reflection of society and its disenfranchised. Sonic Youth must live in a crazed industrial monster of a world, where the collision of cymbals and symbols evokes a collective memory of social imprisonment, where we're all unsuspecting subjects in a Dali film. Luckily, there's something stunning about that. Julianne Shepherd   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Willamette Week | originally published January 26, 2000