the sonic youth experiment
“I like new Sonic Youth the best.”
It was an innocuous-enough sort of thing to say, I figured. In the canon of “stupid stuff I say in the office,” I figured it wouldn’t even be top five (today’s winner was “I never really ‘got’ The Stone Roses”). The link to a Thurston-edited snippet/preview track from SY’s upcoming The Eternal (which, since it’s Matador, we should get!) was being passed around the cubes here and, well… it sounds great! To me, anyway. And it prompted the above blasphemy. I only dug myself deeper when I praised Rather Ripped as their “Broken Social Scene record.” I thought Yancey might seriously punch me.
I’m not completely Sonic Youth-ignorant, but I have what I call “big holes.” My experience with SY has been primarily as a “singles band” (cue uproarious laughter)… except post-Murray Street, when I started listening to their full albums in earnest (laughter x2). Clearly this needed to be rectified. I figured why not do it in the most extreme, daunting way possible: listen to all their albums, in full, in chronological order.
I loaded up my iTunes with every studio album (not counting the myriad SYR shenanigans and wacked-out side projects), hit play and rode the squall wave until the last note of Rather Ripped. Up front, I’ll just say: I’m certainly not expecting to say anything “new” about Thurston & co., but I thought it might be interesting to see what happens, being completely drenched in this weird, fun, loud world for three days straight.
Stupidly, I deleted the Notepad doc with some scattered notes I took as I plowed through the catalog, so the primary remnant remaining of this exercise is a playlist called “SY jamz” with 28 songs I pulled out as they caught my ear. I stopped dragging over every song I liked once I got to Daydream Nation. I couldn’t possibly be later to the canon party, but obviously I could have picked just about every song from Daydream.
In any case, here are my odd rememberences from the listening days and some post-marathon thoughts:
The early albums are not as unlistenable as I was expecting.
Sonic Youth in particular has this dark, almost-danceable downtown NYC no-wave vibe that I like a lot. Thurston does this somewhat interminable caterwauling a lot, but, like… no-wave, dude, duh. Arto Lindsay still makes him sound like fuckin’ Josh Groban or something.
Kim songs are, almost without fail, awesome.
There seems to be this unspoken (maybe it’s actually totally spoken, I dunno) understanding with Kim songs that there will be a firmer backbone, less meandering. “French Tickler” from A Thousand Leaves, one of my favorite “jamz,” has that quietLOUDquiet wave, but doesn’t get lost in its own noise sprawl like some SY songs can. “Shadow of a Doubt” from EVOL is another great example. Another thing I love about this: I had almost certainly never heard either of these songs before this mad task.
My reference points are all backwards.
I managed to get some more half-amused/half-enraged reactions from the Editorial peanut gallery when I’d say stuff like, “Is this their BRMC song?” Mostly I’d be joking. Mostly.
NYC Ghosts & Flowers: mostly terrible. One good-to-great song, though!
0.0s aside, it couldn’t be that bad, right? It wasn’t just the online indie music mafia, though, I’d get comments from friends like, “Maybe you can just play NYC Ghosts & Flowers at your desk while you go out to lunch? Eww. Blech blech.” My impression: pretty damn bad. Track after track of aimless sound trash with a LOT of spoken word. There is this one song, though, “Nevermind (What Was It Anyway)” that has this kind of hypnotic, syncopated groove and a pretty great Kim vocal. Shoulda known: Kim! (Is that song about Nirvana? I don’t listen to lyrics, but the song title… you know.)
The noise is, often, just window dressing.
Obviously, one of the things that makes Sonic Youth special for a lot of people is how they shape/shift sounds (loud masses of sound) into songs that, excuse the limited term here, come out sounding “pop.” One thing that becomes extremely clear, though, listening to their entire discography in one stretch, is how often they take off on a squalling tangent — no real direction or dynamic — only to drop it two/four/six minutes later and emerge on the other side with an exceedingly clean (if often still a bit dissonant) passage. It’s like Thurston gets all fidgety and decides he needs to “shred for a bit.” Over the course of a dozen albums, it gets a bit grating.
While I’d hesitate to call the newer albums “better,” I still think they’re pretty exceptional!
It was especially nice going “back” to Murray Street and Sonic Nurse. Nurse had a solid showing in Jamz Land — “Pattern Recognition,” “Dude Ranch Nurse,” etc. There is a great sense on these later albums of maintaining the dark and the fucked-up, but starting to sharpen/tighten up the arrangements. Rather Ripped takes it the furthest (most songs sit right in the three-and-a-half minute sweet spot).
Dirty is totally their grunge album.
Hardy-har. Kinda true, though. Also, I was surprised how compact it is! Even more than Ripped.
Thattttttt’s about it. As intense as it was, I would totally do it again. In fact, I’m listening to SY Jamz right now. “Eric’s Trip”!
Conclusion: Sonic Youth is good.
“Conclusion: Sonic Youth is good.”
Alex, have I told you lately….?
Seriously, awesome/epic post to conclude awesome/epic listening experiment.
Next up: Listen to the entire Fall discog, in chronological order. GO!
Two additional updates:
1) That Stone Roses record is pretty great! (I can hear the slap of Yancey’s hand against his forehead already)
2) Sonic Youth are doing two special lil’ things for Matador in honor of Record Store Day. Splits with Jay Reatard and Beck (covering “Pay No Mind”!). Details here.
I’d change Kim songs to Lee songs and I wouldn’t hesitate to call the last couple of albums better (at least in context of their Geffen output,) but otherwise can agree with what you’re saying here. Also, Sonic Death is the only early album I find completely unlistenable. There’s a reason it hasn’t been reissued.
I actually like NYC Ghosts & Flowers a bunch, although it definitely lacks the Big Rock Thrills of some of their stuff. (My favorite quote from Thurston, on that tour: “You guys want to hear a song, or a ‘song’?”)
Also, I second Jayson’s suggestion on the Fall, although I’d say studio recordings only, including singles. Maybe a couple of the good live records too–”A Part of America Therein” or “In a Hole”? (I was going to say the best starting point for them is “50,000 Fall Fans Can’t Be Wrong,” but that doesn’t seem to be on eMusic any more–the best equivalent sequence might be “Early Fall” – “Palace of Swords Reversed” – “458489 A-Sides.”)
Man, I’m not sure I could handle a Fall marathon right now. Although I’m similarly ignorant/full of holes — at this point I have a dusty copy of 50,000 Fans and an on-repeat mp3 of their “Victoria” cover. So… yeah. Limited exposure, haha.
Great Thurston quote, btw!
SY is the best band ever. I listen to every album chronologically each and every year. Seriously. Around XMas time.
I’m siding with the “amused” crowd in regards to the BRMC comment.
Fight the Yancey hegemony!
Wait how can you not Like the Roses :-S oh god who are these people (Naw I’m only kidding) but I love the Roses
I love SY blasphemy, even though I basically like everything. (I even dug that Silver Session EP, which is just feedback shaped into snippets.) Here’s mine: Sonic Nurse is my favorite after Daydream Nation.
Alex, limited exposure to the Fall is all the more reason that you should give them their due, same as you did with Sonic Youth! Did you listen to SY’s tribute to the Fall, the “4 Tunna Brix” EP?
At least do the first ten years (1977-87): Early Fall, Live at the Witch Trials (which is not a live album), Dragnet, Totale’s Turns, Grotesque, Slates, Hex Enduction Hour, Room to Live (another studio LP that happens to have the word “live” in the title), Hip Priests & Kamerads, Perverted by Language, The Wonderful and Frightening World, This Nation’s Saving Grace, Palace of Swords Reversed, Bend Sinister, and The Frenz Experiment. That’s ONLY fifteen albums, every one of them essential, and eMusic has almost all of them (except Grotesque, the Slates ep, and the debut of Brix E. Smith on Perverted by Language). If you’re not hooked after Early Years, I’ll eat my hat. Hell, I’ll eat YOUR hat.
See now, I’ll go the other way and say that, just as SY, you need to pay the most attention to the Fall’s 21st century work. Not that any Fall fan is reliable. We are by definition quite the opposite. My own collection is around 95 “official” releases (quite a few of which are multi-record sets), then another 200-ish “unofficial” live recordings. I don’t think there’s really a starting point for The Fall — you’re either in or you’re out. The singles are okay, but in general, singles comps and chronological are one of the worst ways to proceed.
(Hey, are we going to get the new Fall record here in the US?)
I suggest “The Real New Fall Album” and “Are You Are Missing Winner” as the Murray St. (one of my smallest handful of desert island disks)/Sonic Nurse combination. While the former Fall record is generally viewed as one of their pinnacles, the consensus on the latter, that this is one of their true disasters, couldn’t be more wrong. It’s a wonder and a delight. See my comment on that page for details.
In other words, a longish way round to say that I agree on all your key points. Both of these groups hit their real stride around the turn of the century. A lot of SY’s noise, fun when they (and we) were young, is now irrelevant, and kind of tedious. I think that Murray Street was the turning point. After an airplane engine lying on the ground in late summer 2001 blocked them from entering their lower Manhattan studio on Murray Street, I think they started playing for keeps.
For a glimpse of what I hope for from SY’s next iteration, check Thurston’s Trees Outside the Academy. There’s still noise, but in the service of songs…the best of which simply don’t need the kind of noise that was once SY’s stock in trade.
the most beautiful song ever.
puncture your eardrums after listening so that it will be preserved as the last sounds you ever hear.
(ok, don’t go that far. this is really beautiful though. petite bone by thurston moore)
http://www.emusic.com/samples/m3u/song/11149052/16290298.m3u
fdr daddy; the rest of the songs on that comp will do a good job of piercing your eardrums for you!
I have to say I love Thurston for showing up on that comp. A guy who predates My Bloody Valentine showing up on an album with noise artist Kevin Shields (that is not the MBV Kevin shields) … so cool and unpretentious. (That sounds sarcastic but I don’t mean it that way.)
so very true.
and the context of the track is like the cracker to cleanse your palate during the cynanide tasting.
which makes it even more beautiful…
@Tim: I think Imperial Wax Solvent is the best Fall album since The Real New Fall LP, and I hope you get a chance to hear it! I don’t think there will be a US release, since it’s been almost a year since it came out, and the Fall and Narnack Records (the band’s last US label) parted ways some time after Reformation Post TLC. You’ve piqued my curiosity about Are You Are Missing Winner, and I will check it out.
I don’t know about the Fall “hitting its stride” after the turn of the century, but I would agree that the band hit another peak in 2003 with The Real New Fall LP, and again this past year. The Fall is such a long-lived band (over 30 years!) that you can even argue about favorite lineups, much as Grateful Dead fans do. I am partial above all to the 1980-83 era with Marc Riley and Craig Scanlon on guitars. This version of the Fall recorded Grotesque, Slates, Hex Enduction Hour, Perverted by Language, and classic singles like Kicker Conspiracy, Wings, Lie Dream, The Man Whose Head Expanded, How I Wrote Elastic Man, and Totally Wired. The band added a second drummer (another Dead parallel!) and toured Iceland, New Zealand (Fall in a Hole), and the US. The live record A Part of America Therein has brilliant versions of “Winter”, “The NWRA”, and Smith’s epic music industry rant “Cash & Carry”. I think Mark met Brix during that tour, and she joined the band sometime during the recording of Perverted by Language. The Fall entered a more pop-friendly phase during the Beggars Banquet years (which I like, but not as much as the 80-83 stuff.)
@Tim: I don’t mean to lecture a man who owns almost 300 Fall records! Fall fans are seldom in agreement, as you said (or as I think you meant). But I think we can agree on this: without the Fall, there would be no Sonic Youth (and certainly no Pavement).
“But I think we can agree on this: without the Fall, there would be no Sonic Youth (and certainly no Pavement).”
Yes, but I would never hold that against them.
I am one of those that really does prefer the later SY albums to the early ones. I really love a couple of the SYR releases, as well. The early stuff is great and all, I just can’t listen to it with as much pleasure (and I do like NYG&F, just not as much as the albums around it).