Reception
Daydream Nation was released in October 1988 on compact disc, cassette and double vinyl. The album did not chart in the United States, but reached number 99 on the UK Album Charts. There were three singles released from the album, all of which had videos clips: "Teen Age Riot" (released 1988 in 12" vinyl and on CD), "Providence" (released in the UK in 1989), "Candle" (12" released October 1989), and a live version of "Silver Rocket" for subscribers to Forced Exposure. The single "Teen Age Riot" charted on Billboard's newly created Modern Rock Tracks chart at number 20.
Robert Palmer in a January 1989 review for Rolling Stone felt that the album demonstrated "the broad harmonic palette, sharply honed songwriting skills and sheer exhilarating drive" of the "influential quartet", and that it "presents the definitive American guitar band of the Eighties at the height of its powers and prescience". The magazine would later place the album in third place in its 1988 critics poll, calling it the "sound of the New Rock Nation rising". Billboard felt it was "the supreme fulfillment" of the band's "fullbore technique", and Robert Christgau felt their "discordant never-let-up is a philosophical triumph", awarding the album an A grade, and placing it second in his 1988 Pazz & Jop Poll - a listing that made the band realize the album had made an impact. The UK music press also embraced the album: Record Mirror enthusing that Sonic Youth were "the best band in the universe"; the NME calling Daydream Nation the "most radical and political album of the year"; and Q magazine saying it made an "enthralling noise".
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Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To aim to convert a man by miracles is a profanation of the soul. A true conversion, a true Christ, is now, as always, to be made by the reception of beautiful sentiments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)