Sacred tricksters

The release of two posthumous live albums in November was all the excuse the Guardian's Alex Petridis needed to rank Sonic Youth's "greatest songs". Inevitably, as a huge fan of a band who he succinctly describes as "collid[ing] alt-rock with the avant garde in a thrilling noise", I have some observations...

1. In some respects, it's a predictable list, featuring what you might call their statement songs: 'Death Valley '69' (Bad Moon Rising), 'Expressway To Yr Skull' (EVOL), 'Schizophrenia' (Sister), 'Teen Age Riot' (Daydream Nation) and 'The Diamond Sea' (Washing Machine). Not that this is a bad thing at all - if you wanted to give someone a crash course in what Sonic Youth were all about, you couldn't do much better than to start with those five.

2. On the other hand, an apparent desire to be democratic and even-handed means that only their penultimate album, 2006's Rather Ripped, is unrepresented and results in some more leftfield picks: 'Shaking Hell', for instance, from 1983's Confusion Is Sex, which Petridis admits sounds like "the band finding themselves", and 'NYC Ghosts & Flowers', the title track of their most polarising LP. The inclusion of two tracks from 2002's Murray Street ('Rain On Tin' and 'Karen Revisited') prompted me into a revisitation of my own.

3. I was particularly pleased to see the inclusion of Sister's warped ballad 'Kotton Krown' and recognition of the very considerable merits of final album The Eternal in the form of 'Anti-Orgasm'.

4. Petridis is spot on in his comment on the "careworn" 'Sunday', the standout track from 1998's A Thousand Leaves and the blueprint for Thurston Moore's most recent solo material: "Sonic Youth wore maturity incredibly well." As he is in his assessment of 'Little Trouble Girl', which merits quoting in full: "A fabulous anomaly in Sonic Youth's catalogue [that] was both an examination of preconceptions about teenage girls and a song that stripped away the band's signature sounds in a gorgeous, warped homage to 60s girl groups - most specifically the angst-ridden Shangri-Las of 'I Can Never Go Home Anymore' and 'Past, Present And Future'."

5. And so to the disagreements... Personally, 'Kim Gordon And The Arthur Doyle Hand Cream' wouldn't have been my pick from 2004's Sonic Nurse. I'd probably have plumped for 'Starfield Road' ahead of 'Sweet Shine' from Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star, and, as good as 'Tunic (Song For Karen)' is, it's closer 'Titanium Expose' that's my favourite track on major label debut Goo these days. While '100%' is arguably the most well-known track on 1992's Dirty ( the album that I heard first and still rate above all the others), I'd have chosen 'Drunken Butterfly' - a total glorious headfuck to the 14-year-old me, with 'Theresa's Sound World' and 'Sugar Kane' just behind.

But enough of the quibbling. The list as it stands, and the fact that you could also make a good case for the inclusion of countless other songs, is testament to their extraordinary longevity and legacy. I'm taking this as a cue to dive back into that fabulously rich back catalogue - and so should you.