The 'Next Album' Dilemma

More and more this question keeps popping up: I have Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. What do I buy next?

You could apply this to any artist with huge kudos and critical acclaim with a massive back catalogue. However, Sonic Youth really ARE a problem.

So you've got their most fawned over, commercially viable release....where the hell do you go from there? Well let's try and come up with a scientific formula shall we?

There are twelve tracks on DN. For simplicities sake though lets take just four of them. 'Teen Age Riot', 'Silver Rocket', 'Kissability' and 'The Sprawl'.
Now these tracks are going to determine where to head in your SY journey next. It's simple. Giving them a rating one through four with 4 being your favourite and 1 being your least favourite (there are no bad tracks on Daydream Nation) you can then decide which way your heart is telling you to turn. It's like one of those adventure books where you choose which door to take and turn the page it tells you to go, only less fun and more rewarding.

So say 'Silver Rocket' is 4 and 'Kissability' is 1. I determine from this that you prefer their more direct approaches, with punk sensibility and the occasional noisy interlude, whereas 'Kissability' has Kim Gordon's vocals on it.
So, I'd say Rather Ripped (despite having Kim on it) is easily your next choice. However, if it is reversed I would probably head towards Goo - simply because it has 'Kool Thing' on it.
Now, if you enjoyed 'The Sprawl' and it's extended noise passage, this is a VERY good thing because this is probably 7/10ths of the whole of their output. I would point you towards Sister or any of the 'New York' triology (NYC Ghosts & Flowers, Murray Street and Sonic Nurse).
If you're well into 'Teen Age Riot' head towards Dirty or Evol.
Now if you find yourself awarding 'TAR' and 'SR' a 4 and 3 respectively - definitely hit A Thousand Leaves and Washing Machine while giving 'The Sprawl' and 'Kissability' the same marks will leave you in the corner of the more noisy and experimental Bad Moon Rising, S/T debut or Confusion Is Sex.
For the record, the hardest LP to listen to is NYC Ghosts and Flowers. Both Goo and Dirty have 'pop' hits as does A Thousand Leaves. Their most complete albums are Murray Street, Rather Ripped and Sister.

So this is how it goes.
TAR - Teen Age Riot SR - Silver Rocket TS - The Sprawl K - Kissability
The only ones used in an equation are the two highest marked albums:

TAR + SR = ATL / WM
TS + K = BMR/SY/CIS
TAR + K = G/BMR
TS + TAR = MS/SN
K + SR = E/RR

and so on...
Of course what complicates matters is that there is one more major SY album (namely Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star) to be heard. So let's just say this - buy something by Sonic Youth, give it three weeks of your precious listening time and, if you never listen to it again, you are a Sonic Youth fan and should proceed to buy all the albums in any order you like so you can fill up your CD rack and show off your collection to your mates.