The Sonics’ weighty reputation as one of the most celebrated names in US garage rests squarely on their all important first two albums, Here Are The Sonics�(1965) and Boom, released early the following year. With Here Are… recently issued on CD for the first time in the UK, Big Beat now give us Boom as a CD facsimile of the original vinyl release, even down to the glorious monaural sound and the reproduced original record labels.
As with their debut, Boom was originally released on the local Tacoma label Etiquette, and the album is a 50/50 mix of unhinged Sonics originals and covers of trusty rock’n’roll standards. The opening high-energy assault of Cinderella is as primal as primal got in the pre-psychedelic days, as are He’s Waiting, Shot Down and arguably the most psychotic version of Louie Louie ever recorded. The band allegedly ripped the soundproofing off the walls of the Wiley/Griffith recording studio (an establishment more used to the sedate dynamics of country music than prototype punk) to get a more live sound. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine The Sonics at their peak sounding anything other than dangerously untamed.
