FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
Part Twenty-One: Sonic Youth
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IN this instalment of A Buyer’s Guide…
PHOTO CREDIT: Martyn Goodacre/Getty Images
I am investigating Sonic Youth. Formed in 1981, the band consisted of Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar) and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) – who were in the band from the start to the end -, while Steve Shelley (drums) followed a series of short-term drummers in 1985, rounding out the core line-up; Jim O'Rourke (guitar) was a member of the band from 1999 to 2005. Sonic Youth helped recontextualise and define what guitar music could be, and they have inspired scores of artists. Their final album came in 2009 with The Eternal, and there has been talk of reunion since then. I don’t think it will ever happen and it is unlikely the band, if they got back together, would ever reach the same heights they did in their heyday! The band put out fifteen studio albums, and I have whittled their work down to the essential four, an underrated album, and their final studio effort – also bringing in a Sonic Youth book worth investing in. If you are new to Sonic Youth, then the guide below…
IN THIS PHOTO: (L-R) Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth at Paradiso on 11th May, 1986 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands/PHOTO CREDIT: Frans Schellekens/Redferns
SHOULD help out.
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The Four Essential Album
Evol
Release Date: May 1986
Label: SST (059)
Producers: Sonic Youth/Martin Bisi
Standout Tracks: Shadow of a Doubt/Death to Our Friends/Secret Girl
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Sonic-Youth-Evol/master/9739
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5Bf5U1Zw9gsJh6bWaM2VY2
Review:
“While EVOL is still an album steeped in the noise and collage aesthetic the band grew from (most notable in the tape experiments, unexpected screams, and mesh of feedback and car-race sound effects of Lee Ranaldo's spoken word contribution "In the Kingdom #19" and the ghostly music-box loop and Kim Gordon's slithering vocals on "Secret Girls"), the songs here also represent the band's first flirtations with pop. Though gift-wrapped in jagged guitar tones and airy alternate tunings, songs like "Green Light," "Star Power," and the hypnotic bliss-out of album closer "Expressway to Yr. Skull" are built on cores of reaching melodicism and a tunefulness that borders at times on sounding playful. The addition of Shelley's propulsive drumming gave much-needed punctuation to the band's previously murky approach and connected some of the amorphous Halloween-themed textures the band was immersed in at the time to more deliberate, even traditional song structures. This affection for big, dumb, simplistic pop is driven home by their cover of Kim Fowley's unabashedly sleazy rocker "Bubblegum," included as a bonus track on early non-LP versions of the album. A product of a band finding its way between worlds, EVOL is a remarkably strong effort, and sets the stage for crystallizing ideas that would soon result in what many considered the band's finest work” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Starpower
Daydream Nation
Release Date: 18th October, 1988
Labels: Enigma (U.S.)/Blast First (U.K.)
Producers: Nick Sansano/Sonic Youth
Standout Tracks: Silver Rocket/’Cross the Breeze/Total Trash
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Sonic-Youth-Daydream-Nation/master/9768
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5z8bPdGFiJx56cqsHTvWM9
Review:
“Of course, now that a whole genre's grown out from Daydream Nation’s roots, all its “difficult” sounds, modified guitars, and strange collisions have become de riguer, invisible, and normalized, more clearly revealing the shimmering pop epics that always lay beneath. What’s really shocking is the energy of it. This record’s default setting is the place most rock bands try to work up to around the third chorus—guitar players veering off into neck-strangling improvisations, singers dropping off the melody and into impassioned shouts. These songs start there and just stay. Usually the guitars spend a few bars wandering off and into sideways tangles, choking out their harmonies, and then come back together and spend a few bars pinning down the riff: On “’Cross the Breeze,” that means Kim Gordon keeps returning to the same refrain, each time grunting it more insistently than the last. Sometimes they don’t even stay there: Lee Ranaldo’s “Hey Joni” starts off already on some next level of energy, and then Lee shouts “kick it!” and the band ratchets up to some next next level, and then he coasts up to one exhilarating shouted “HEY!” and the band bursts through a ceiling higher than you could have imagined at the start of the track. It’s the kind of transcendent glory that crosses genres and even arts: that same in-the-zone feeling you get from a be-bop combo in top gear, a rapper at the absolute clear-eyed peak of his game—hell, even an athlete in perfect function” – Pitchfork
Choice Cut: Teen Age Riot
Goo
Release Date: 26th June, 1990
Label: DGC
Producers: Nick Sansano/Ron Saint Germain/Sonic Youth
Standout Tracks: Dirty Boots/Mary-Christ/Disappearer
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Sonic-Youth-Goo/master/9751
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iYYQwB0oH9FVyVlaOXZdr
Review:
“The album opener “Dirty Boots” meanders in with two distinct riffs and the eventual full rhythm arrangement before first verse. The music is intense and biting but Moore’s vocals seem half-hearted until the song reaches a “sonic crescendo” with inventive feedback before breaking down and methodically working its way through the instrumental outro. “Tunic (Song for Karen)” was composed by Gordon as a loose tribute to Karen Carpenter. She delivers the lyrics in a mainly spoken word manner under rapid ethereal riffing, offering a very haunting look into inner destructive thoughts. “Mary-Christ” doesn’t quite work nearly as well as the opening two tracks as a proto-punk, badly improvised screed.
The album’s most famous track, “Kool Thing”, features interesting, upbeat rock intro with great drumming by Shelley throughout. The mid section breaks down into a bass-backed spoken word bridge featuring Gordon and and guest Chuck D. The song’s title was inspired by an interview that Gordon conducted with LL Cool J and the lyrics make reference to several of the rapper’s works. “Mote” is the sole composition by Ranaldo on Goo as well as his only lead vocals. The seven and a half minute track moves from an overloaded feedback intro to basic rock chording to a pure psychedelic and atmospheric trip which persists without form. “Disappearer” follows, featuring a thick upper range and steady rhythm under Moore’s melodic vocals and multiple key jumps through the progression into several sonic tunnels” – Classic Rock Review
Choice Cut: Kool Thing
Dirty
Release Date: 21st July, 1992
Label: DGC
Producers: Butch Vig/Sonic Youth
Standout Tracks: 100%/Sugar Kane/Youth Against Fascism
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Sonic-Youth-Dirty/master/9844
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/7oNRvhXwhNCfHEUGER5EhG
Review:
“Hey, isn't this the Sonic Youth: art-wankers slumming it on the Lower East Side, who make a hellish noise when not receiving massive hand-outs from daddy and mommy, who are no longer alternative since they decided to worship at the altar of corporate packaging and are the epitome of old, jaded, in-the-way scenesters? I'll advise you to leave your preconceptions and cynicism at the door. Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley might be vaguely middle class, but they're not rich. They're only arty if it means taking the world as we perceive it and making it strange, grabbing rock music by the scruff of the neck and forcing change, not merely replicating what s gone before Their preoccupation with stars, schizophrenia and Amerikkkana almost behind them (but not quite), Sonic Youth have made a giant leap forward from Goo . While others (My Bloody Valentine included) have taken their blueprint and distorted it anew, these haughtily cool people have decided to go for broke and "leave them all behind . It would have been quite easy to take Nirvana's oeuvre as a starting point and try to emulate their astounding (unintentional) successplan, but that would've been the beginning of the end. 'Dirty' will not shift a million units- unless the world goes barmier than it already is but it is an achievement nonetheless, a success at a grander level whose effects will still be felt years from now” – NME
Choice Cut: Drunken Butterfly
The Underrated Gem
A Thousand Leaves
Release Date: 12th May, 1998
Label: DGC
Producers: Sonic Youth/Wharton Tiers
Standout Tracks: Sunday/Wildflower Soul/The Ineffable Me
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Sonic-Youth-A-Thousand-Leaves/master/9895
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/2SDi8NTSiq6qQ2WTkrp9X4
Review:
“Truth be told, the grunge era never quite fit Sonic Youth. They may have been at the peak of their popularity, but they had traded their experimentalism for sheer, bracing noise. It may have sounded good, but ultimately Dirty didn't have the cerebral impact of Sister, largely because it was tied to an admittedly effective backbeat. Beginning with Washing Machine, Sonic Youth returned to more adventurous territory, and in 1997, they released a series of EPs that illustrated their bond with such post-rock groups as Tortoise and Gastr del Sol. Those EPs, as well as the epic Washing Machine closer, "The Diamond Sea," provide the foundation for A Thousand Leaves, the band's most challenging and satisfying record in years. The blasts of dissonance that characterized their SST masterworks have been replaced, by and large, by winding, intricate improvisations. There's a surprising warmth to the subdued guitars of Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, and Kim Gordon, which keeps the lengthy songs captivating. Both Moore and Ranaldo concentrate on quiet material, which almost makes Gordon's noisy politicized rants sound a little out of place, but her best moments ("French Tickler," "Heather Angel") have unsettling, unpredictable twists and turns that greatly contribute to the success of A Thousand Leaves. It may be their most cerebral album in ages, but that only makes it all the more engaging” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Hits of Sunshine (For Allen Ginsberg)
The Final Album
The Eternal
Release Date: 9th June, 2009
Label: Matador
Producer: John Agnello
Standout Tracks: Anti-Orgasm/Antenna/Massage the History
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/Sonic-Youth-The-Eternal/master/122176
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5qo7iEWkMEaSXEZ7fuPvC3?si=2o_vTL-XSXyHBhH_68gJWg
Review:
“Bristling with impetuous energy, The Eternal might have been recorded by a bunch of pups who weren't even born when Sonic Youth released their debut in 1982. There is an excitable, almost naive quality to its visceral riffs and enthusiastic name-checks of artists, poets and countercultural figures. When Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon yelp "anti-war is anti-orgasm!" over thrusting guitars and sledgehammer drums, they sound like teenagers plotting revolution while listening to a Stooges album stolen from their parents. Or, for that matter, another Sonic Youth record: the figures they evoke most passionately are their younger selves. . You hear it best when the fire of Anti-Orgasm is doused by fluidly beautiful melody, and a hum of radio static scratches at the surface of the limpid Antenna: both songs are as scintillating as diamonds” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: Sacred Trickster
The Sonic Youth Book
Goodbye 20th Century: Sonic Youth and the Rise of Alternative Nation
Author: David Browne
Publication Date: 4th June, 2009
Publishers: Little/Brown Book Group
Synopsis:
“There has never been a rock institution quite like Sonic Youth. Their distinctive, uncompromising sound provided a map for innumerable musicians who followed, and in 2005, CMJ, the bible of the indie and alternative music work, ranked them no. 3 on its list of the 25 most influential artists of the last quarter century. But their impact does not end with their music. The Sonic Youth worldview encompasses punk rock, trashy pulp fiction, pop-art minimalism, contemporary classical composition, glam rock, leftist politics, feminist iconography, and ironic humour. Countless musicians and artists - including Kurt Cobain, Beck, Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola - were introduced to the world thanks to Sonic Youth. In Goodbye 20th Century, David Browne tells the full glorious story of 'the Velvet Underground of their generation', based on extensive research, fresh interviews with the band and those who have worked with them, and unprecedented access to unreleased recordings and documents. Complete with never before published photos and artwork, Goodbye 20th Century is a richly detailed account of an iconic band and the times they helped create” – Waterstones
Order: https://www.waterstones.com/book/goodbye-20th-century/david-browne/9780749929411