"Oh, by the way, Dirty is a great Sonic Youth disc, easily ranking with Daydream Nation and Sister (1987) among the band’s most unified and unforgettable recorded works. The aural “dirt” is one element that pulls the album together. Another is the thematic move away from the cyberpunk allegory of recent discs and squarely into a confrontation with life in America during a particularly scary election year. Sentiments along the lines of “I believe Anita Hill/The judge’ll rot in hell” and “Yeah, the president sucks,” from the coruscating “Youth Against Fascism,” dovetail with the sexual-harassment issue addressed in the skronking head-clanger “Swimsuit Issue” and with the melodically haunting, ideologically devastating “Chapel Hill,” a sharp retort to the geriatric politics of Jesse Helms and his ilk. The aura of insurgency provides a charged context for the disc’s more personal songs, upping the intensity and the emotional stakes and fusing a collection of diverse tracks into a scorched and scorching whole. Dirty is a burner."

- Robert Palmer, Rolling Stone