why is Daydream Nation SY's biggest album? Bad Moon Rising,

Daydream Nation was a clear distillation of their past work. Even the band has said as much, on top of saying that they can divide the band into the way they wrote before/during DDN, and how they more or less completely restarted after it (you can find this is Matthew Stearns' book about the album).

Personally, I think DDN is much more singular than anything else they put out (though Bad Moon Rising is ridiculously underrated in their discog). Up to EVOL you can still hear traces of their no wave influences as fairly dominant, and Sister is more indebted to traditional punk and post-punk. DDN is a sound that manages to wear it's influences proudly but is wholly theirs. For a few examples, Teen Age Riot has an emphasis on pure rhythm that couldn't have been made if Ranaldo hadn't played for Glenn Branca in his past, 'Cross the Breeze is basically hardcore art punk, The Sprawl comes across as a sister piece to Expressway, and they're constantly dropping references to diverse acts like The Stooges, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young. I guess to distill what I'm saying, DDN is almost an encyclopedia for the band to that point, and even they realized that whereas DDN was a logical progression of what they were doing, they had to go in a different direction if they wanted to keep going at all after it.

Sonic Youth is my favorite band, and on every other record in their main discog I can point to something that I don't like, whereas with DDN I can only point to things I like less.

I'm aware that Imgur.com will stop allowing adult images since 15th of May. I'm taking actions to backup as much data as possible. Read more on this topic here - https://archived.moe/talk/thread/1694/

I'm aware that Imgur.com will stop allowing adult images since 15th of May. I'm taking actions to backup as much data as possible.
Read more on this topic here - https://archived.moe/talk/thread/1694/