Tag Archives: Thurston Moore

2014, albums, miscellaneous, music, personal, thoughts

In Memoriam Sonic Youth Part IX: “Washing Machine”

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Sonic Youth – “Washing Machine”

The Diamond Sea

Not that I knew it at the time, but this would be the last Sonic Youth album I would listen to regularly for a while. They started to fall off significantly after “Washing Machine” came out and Sonic Youth and I started to part ways for a while. It definitely wasn’t because this is a bad album, because it isn’t. I think that this is one of the stronger albums in their oeuvre. They seemed to attach themselves a little bit more to that wide open and thinner aesthetic that showed up on “Experimental, Jet Set…” The sound of “Winner’s Blues,” if you will, became the guiding voice. At least that is how I hear it.

Everyone that’s reading this already knows that the wheels started to come off not long after this album was released. A lot of gear was stolen (stolen SY guitars are still turning up here and there) which found the band not just investing in new instruments, but a whole new approach given the instruments that they had at their disposal. More on that later.

This album is most notable, not only for having, strangely, their most instantly recognizable cover art since “Goo,” but also for the magnum-noise-opus “The Diamond Sea.” It was no surprise, yet still an odd choice, to release the 19+ minute track as the single off the album. Obviously it needed to be edited down significantly for mass consumption, which seemed like something very un-Sonic Youth, while at the same time sending out a song such as “The Diamond Sea” as a single is very Sonic Youth.

One definitely got their money’s worth when they purchased this album. At about an hour and 8 minutes the album is only a minute or two short of maxing out a CD. Come to find out even the 19+ minute version of “The Diamond Sea” is an edited down version. The fact of the matter is that it stands as one of Sonic Youth’s most intensely beautiful and emotionally driven tracks. It sounds like an ending, a farewell of sorts. If I had been old enough to think about such things when I was 14 and hearing this for the first time I would have been worried if it was going to be their last album. What a way to go out, with 10+ minutes of pure guitar feedback and a wall of noise.

The whirling cloud of howling guitars is at once acknowledgement of past work, looking back from an entirely different world. It’s a farewell of sorts, and little did they know exactly how fitting that farewell would be for at least a little while. I think that a song that epic, especially when used to conclude an album, can’t help but sound like a closing off of something, or maybe everything. It has so much power that everything afterward can be viewed as a coda in their career. They had made it this far, 13 years and 9 albums, without a misstep. Maybe “The Diamond Sea” is the band reminding us that even after a career that at that point had surpassed nearly all their contemporaries in longevity and (relative) commercial success.

Whereas “Bull in the Heather” was a “hit,” a song that even people that didn’t know Sonic Youth, knew; “The Diamond Sea” resonated deeply with long-time fans. At least this is how I perceived it when I was hearing “Washing Machine” for the first time.

It would be a few years before another “proper” Sonic Youth release, meaning another release on DGC. Two years after “Washing Machine” was released the band started working on their SYR series of albums, showcasing their instrumental and more experimental material. To me the albums are sonic sketchbooks, where material for future albums will occasionally appear within different contexts. That was the power of “The Diamond Sea,” it fits well within the context of a mass market album, yet guides us smoothly into the band’s own world of music exploration.

 

2013, albums, miscellaneous, music, personal, thoughts

In Memoriam Sonic Youth Part VIII: “Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star”

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Sonic Youth - "Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star"
Sonic Youth – “Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star”

“Experimental, Jet Set, Trash & No Star” was the first new album that Sonic Youth released since I had started listening to them a few years before, or maybe it was just the year before. Anyway, for that reason I still think of it as a “new” album of theirs even though it isn’t really a new album at all. It came out in 1994, which means almost 20 years ago. Great, if I wasn’t feeling old already, now I definitely am.

More importantly I think of this album, still, as their “acoustic” album. I know that this isn’t true by any stretch of the imagination, but I think that I got this idea stuck in my head based entirely on the first track “Winner’s Blues,” which did feature heavily acoustic guitars, bright sounding, clear, acoustic guitars, with Thurston singing through one of those bullet mics that are usually used by blues singers. It just had this whole different sound to it than I was used to from what I had heard from them up to that point.

I feel like to a certain degree that album is a bit of a lost relic or something. And, now that I think about it, I feel like maybe “Dirty” is too, though “Goo” manages to hold on to some status as an iconic album, if for nothing else because of the album art and the fact that it was the band making the leap from indie status to a major label. But this “lost relic” idea is something that I experience myself foisting onto the album. I don’t often think of listening to this one, and when I do – because it is usually a long time between listens for me – I always get this overwhelming feeling of hearing these songs for the first time all over again.

Again, when I had this album I had it on tape, and I remember the “run-out groove” sound bite that comes in at the end of the album always (and still does) caught me by surprise and scared the shit out of me (it still does that too). If you aren’t familiar with it, go and listen to the last song on the album and then just sit back and wait and tell me that that doesn’t make you panic for at least a few seconds.

This album is a little bit less balanced than anything they had previously done. First of all, throwing off the balance completely, is that this is the first album to not have any tracks by Lee Ranaldo. There are some straight ahead rockers like “Waist” and “Starfield Road” as well as the blues based “Screaming Skull” and the surprising radio “hit” “Bull in the Heather.” If any band was going to take extended guitar technique and turn it into a pop hook, what better band to do it than these guys?

The point is,  basically, that there is a division here. It’s a point of departure. Sure there were noisy parts on the album, but overall the production is crystal clear. Songs are starting to get stripped down a bit, the band is getting more comfortable working in slower songs and letting the silences speak for themselves. This is an element that will come into even more play when they release “Washing Machine” another couple years down the road.

I guess that today I am really writing this post for myself because I need to remind myself that this is an album that is worth going back to and spending more time with. This album is worth knowing better than I currently know it. I’m attaching the video to “Bull in the Heather” below for a few reasons: first reason is that it is very painfully of the time. Kathleen Hanna dancing around and clawing at Thurston, jumping all over the band, the fashion, the attitude, all very 1990s. I also remember seeing this video quite a lot on regular MTV rotation, and of course on 120 minutes, not to mention the number of spins that it got on local independent radio station 90.5 WBER. Take a listen, and then go back and relisten to the entire album. It’s amazing how much a band can change their sound and keep things consistent.

2013, albums, miscellaneous, personal, thoughts

In Memoriam Sonic Youth Part VII: “Dirty”

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Sonic Youth - "Dirty"
Sonic Youth – “Dirty”

This is how it all started for me. When I bought my first Sonic Youth CDs from a friend at middle school that had way better taste in music than me and for some reason (I still have no idea why anyone would want to do this) but he didn’t want his Sonic Youth CDs anymore, or “Goo” and “Dirty” anyway. And even though I got both of those recordings at the same time I decided on listening to Dirty first,maybe because it was the most recent? Or maybe because I just liked the opening of “100%” the best. Not sure. Can’t remember. Not important. What is important is that I dubbed that thing to a side of a Maxell and played it incessantly.

I remember just being outside listening to the album on my walkman. I can’t remember exactly what I was doing, all I remember is that I was standing there. Just standing there in our backyard listening to “Dirty” on headphones. I listened to it walking to school, mowing the lawn, riding my bike aimlessly around our housing tract. At some point, knowing nothing about the band I remember thinking that they really could just do anything that they wanted. They didn’t sound like anything I had ever heard, and there was so many “mistakes” all over the place, there was so much displaced noise and feedback and just all these parts where I couldn’t tell what the hell was going on at all. Instead of dismissing it immediately, there was something about the sound of the album overall that kept me hooked. In my mind, from this point on, they could do no wrong (and how was I supposed to know that they were eventually going to release “New York City Ghosts and Flowers” or “A Thousand Leaves”?), they were the leaders, they knew better than anyone else. I didn’t know why I thought that (and I still don’t know what led me to think that) but I believed it.

100%

The noisy opening of “100%” still sounds anthemic to me. It’s a really great way to open an album. The sound just explodes into existence like nothing else that they had ever done. Just think all the way back to “Confusion is Next” and “Bad Moon Rising” all the way up to “Goo,” none of their album openers were this immediate and attention getting. None of their album openers were, quite plainly, this loud. Of course, I didn’t know that at the time, but this may be, now that I think about it, the only album of theirs that opens so noisily.

And “Swimsuit Issue” and “Drunk Butterfly” featuring Kim Gordon’s jagged, forced vocals, might have been one of the first times that I had ever come to know a band that had more than one person taking on vocal duties. It would be several months at least before I realized that, in addition to Thurston, Lee actually sang some of the songs too. Not long after those realizations was noticing the different styles of each of their songs. Sure, “Teen Age Riot” is a different song entirely from “Hey Joni,” just like “100%” and “Wish Fulfillment” were completely different here.

Sugar Kane

Then there is the song “Nic Fit.” At the time that was my favorite. Of course, I couldn’t rewind the tape over and over to listen to the song. Not only was that a pain in the ass (not to mention I was impatient) but it would drain the battery when I could listen to the album a few more times instead. I would just have to wait for it to come around again. It still doesn’t sound like the same band to me. It’s clear to me now that part of the reason that that song sounds so different is that it was recorded live, and/or direct to tape. Something about that recording is just gritty, it sounds like it might have been done on a hand-held recorder. At the time I didn’t really think about those considerations as much as I just wanted to hear it because it was fast, sloppy and noisy. Listening to “Nic Fit” made me feel like I was listening to honest, old-school punk. The ending of that song, where it all collapses into slack-stringed destruction with Thurston intoning “tell nothing but the truth,” well that pretty much was just it for me.

Chapel Hill

I still think of “Dirty” fondly, though come to think of it I don’t really listen to it that much anymore. Lately (this week) I’ve been gravitating more toward the later stuff, particularly the SYR albums. But that is a discussion for another time. Looking back on “Dirty” I guess that I am glad that I came to know the band while they still had some youthful energy left in them. A few more great albums were ahead of them.

2013, albums, music, personal, reviews, thoughts

In Memoriam Sonic Youth Part VI: “Goo”

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SonicYouth - "Goo"
SonicYouth – “Goo”

The major label debut. Sonic Youth had followed the lead of Hüsker Dü by leaving the indie underground behind to sign with a major label. This deal with DGC paved the way for an explosion of new bands to become far more accessible than they had ever previously imagined. Of course that is a fight for another day, because some people defend Sonic Youth’s decision to take their show to the majors, while others still say that they had sold out. Thurston Moore tried to clear things up, after moving to Matador for the final phase in their career, saying that it was merely a matter of distribution. They wanted to reach more people, and with the internet thriving in the new millennium the band felt comfortable enough (and I’m sure it didn’t hurt that they were a household name by the time “The Eternal” came out anyway) to leave the major label behind and return to an independent like Matador.

All of that is beside the point. I think it’s more important that Sonic Youth managed to keep their artistic selves in tact during the transition. Sure, “Goo” certainly sounds more produced than any of their previous efforts, and some of the songs seem to be obvious attempts at mainstream radio-play. Ok, maybe not mainstream like Top 40, but “Dirty Boots,”  and “Kool-Thing,” though classic SY tracks, sound very of the time. But with some of those attempts at commercial success they also had songs like “Tunic (Song for Karen),” “Cinderella’s Big Score,” and “Titanium Exposé” that are obvious products of the usual SY process.

Tunic (Song For Karen)

The noise hadn’t disappeared by any means, for that we have “Mildred Pierce.” The same can be said for the overall atmosphere of the album, that brings back the general sinister darkness of, say, “Evol.”

I can’t help but wonder, listening back to the album now for probably the millionth time, if there was a certain part of them that was ironically recording some of these songs as wry commentaries on the corporate rock world overall. Hearing some of those “solos” come in, or the barrage of noise and interplay between Thurston and Lee that serve to stand in for the guitar solos, make me smile to myself. It’s as though they are commenting on the traditional rock song format, in the era of hair metal, by following it to a tee without straying from their original concept.

Titanium Expose

And they are geniuses for being able to do something like that. That ability to be adept, and thoroughly assured of their style allows them to only have to shade things ever so slightly in order to move between seemingly sarcastic social commentary to individualistic honesty. Just listen to the difference between the noise break down in “Dirty Boots” and that of “Tunic (Song for Karen).”

I also remember that when I was first listening to this album (“Goo” and “Dirty” were the  first two Sonic Youth albums I ever owned. “Dirty” was the most recent release when I bought the CDs and two shirts off a friend of mine when I was in middle school) I had taped it from the CD and for some reason or another I had left “Mote” off the tape. I’m assuming it was something to do with that it’s the longest track on the album and I probably had “Dirty” on one side and “Goo” on the other. Anyway, the re-discovery (or maybe it was simply discovery) of “Mote” has etched into my mind that that is one of the best tracks on the album.

Disappearer

There really isn’t a bad track on the album, but it must have come as somewhat of a shock to people that were with them from the beginning. Thankfully the album isn’t so different that it sounds very “of the time.” This album has just as much of a timeless quality as each of those preceding. “Disappearer” captures that haunting beauty and ecstatic energy that really become a growing part of their overall aesthetic. For the first time in writing these entries about Sonic Youth I am finding it difficult to not just upload each of the tracks. I’m sure that the album can be found in full on youtube or spotify or whatever so you’ll just have to listen to the three that I decided on here. I figured I wouldn’t pick the obvious ones, but tracks that still manage to capture the overall sound of the album.

I feel like I am really lucky to have gotten into Sonic Youth at about this time. They still had several good albums in them after this, and to a certain extent this is where I start to feel as though I actually grew up listening to the band. Pretty significant, and rare, to be able to stick with a band from the time you are 13 to the time you are 32.

In the next part of this ongoing chronicle I’ll talk about “Dirty,” or the album that started it all for me, or the album that was my favorite thing ever for 2 years until “Experimental, Jet Set, Trash & No Star” came out.

 

2013, albums, miscellaneous, music, personal, thoughts

In Memoriam Sonic Youth Part V: “Daydream Nation”

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Sonic Youth - "Daydream Nation"
Sonic Youth – “Daydream Nation”

Well, this is the one. This is the album that I start everyone off with. It is their undisputed classic. Daydream Nation. Even the name, to me anyway, is enigmatic. It’s just perfect, flawless in every way. The opening, the close. There is not one bad thing to say about this album. I may be letting my bias show, but I am also the one that wears a toque with “Sonic Youth” sewed into it every day once the temperature goes below 50º.

Teen Age Riot

Anyway, I still remember getting this album on cassette. I like to tell myself (and others) that it is the first album that I ever bought. And though this story isn’t completely accurate (we all had our unfortunate phases when we were too young to know what it meant to listen to good music. Though, I have met some people that really haven’t had one of those phases. I am extremely jealous that those people didn’t have to go through an MC Hammer phase and a whatever the hell else phase. I listened to Top 40 radio a lot until I was like 10. So sue me.) but in a way it is the truth. Buying Daydream Nation was the first album that I ever bought that ever mattered. I never looked back, and I still haven’t. I can’t even imagine how many times I have listened to this album.

I still remember getting the tape and looking through the pictures and the lyrics and just staring at it. Everything was just part of a complete package. The color scheme, the mood of the pictures with their grainy, hazy focus of the band standing in (what I assume is) the Bowery near CBGB’s (totally guessing there, but just going with what I was thinking then) and the cover photo (which I didn’t know at the time was a famous painting, a painting which I have been lucky enough to see in person in Chicago. It was an amazing experience standing in front of that painting, with its meaning sort of reversed in a way that the painting now described the album to me, whereas when I first heard the album, it was, to me, describing the sound of that painting) and just everything seemed to be so focused and purposeful. I can’t be alone in thinking that the sound of Lee’s disintegrating amp throughout “Providence” is meant to sound like a burning candle, giving sound to the cover? And, of course, there is the song “Candle,” but that is too obvious.

Cross The Breeze

And how could those sounds be so purposeful? How could the howling guitars that blasted out of the middle of “Silver Rocket” possibly be directed, or purposeful? I didn’t know the word ‘aleatory’ back then, but I know that I was thinking about how they got those sounds – that sounded so random and scattered and loud and noisy and…great – to do what they wanted them to do? How was it that they were able to tame the wild feedback and static into the form of the songs?

I still wonder about these things to this day. It just seems like all of the elements were perfect when they were recording the album. All the mistakes fit perfectly into the aesthetic of the album. The interactions of the guitars, the structure of the songs, the lyrics, the focus, this was an already amazing band making a giant leap forward in their sound. Sure, like I said in previous posts, the sounds on “Sister,” and even as far back as “Bad Moon Rising,” were pointing to this, we all knew that something like this was on the way (well, I mean people at the time that were paying attention knew. I was only 7 when the album came out. I had no clue what was going on, I was home learning to do multiplication or something like that), maybe not something exactly like this, I don’t think that this is the kind of album that anyone completely expects. There is definitely going to be a certain amount of surprise at hearing something this great for the first time. I mean, I know that it caught me off guard.

In a way though, this album is sort of bittersweet. I really don’t think that they ever got any higher than this. This was their last release before they signed to DGC, and though I love some of those albums, most of those albums, I don’t think that they were ever able to keep the magic that was on “Daydream Nation.”

Candle

And that is part of the reason why this album is so special. It was a moment in time. It was something that even the band themselves could not replicate, and who knows if they even wanted to. This was Sonic Youth at the peak of their powers, and it has had an immeasurable impact upon my life to this day. I’m still trying to convince students that they want to take my class on post-tonal analysis that uses Sonic Youth’s output as the corpus that we’d analyze. There is just so much here. So many conventions that are shattered, so much individuality and energy and vision. I could go on for days about all the things that I remember when I first heard this album.

I truly hope that another album will come along that even makes me feel 1/10th as good as I felt when I first heard Daydream Nation, and I know that it will come someday, but at the same time I know that I’m going to be waiting for a long time before it happens.

 

2013, albums, miscellaneous, music, personal, thoughts, writing

In Memoriam Sonic Youth: Part IV. “Sister”

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Sonic Youth - "Sister"
Sonic Youth – “Sister”

 

This one is epic. I mean, I love all the albums that came before Sister, but I feel like this is the beginning of something really great. I mean, I think you all know what is going to come after this album. Now, I know that “Evol” is really great too, and I do love “Bad Moon Rising,” and even more so “Confusion is Sex,” but “Sister” is one of the albums that has been getting constant plays on my stereo since I first heard it.

There are so many classic SY tracks on this one that’s it’s hard to know where I should begin, so I guess that I should just start at the beginning of the album and work through it from there. And this album has a great album opener with “Schizophrenia.” I specifically remember coming to “Sister” around the same time that I first picked up a guitar and started bashing away at it, trying to learn every song that I could, which usually just meant me playing every note every second and trying to listen for when they matched what was coming through the stereo and then trying to memorize what I was doing so that I could maybe, possibly, replicate that at a later point.

Well, when I tried to learn how to play “Schizophrenia” I found that my usual strategy really wasn’t going to work. I couldn’t figure out why none of open string major or minor chords that I knew weren’t fitting any of the sounds that were coming out of my stereo. I mean, I think I played every chord up there on that poster of 24 or so chords. I even tried the ones with the number 7 next to them, those are the weird jazz chords, right? At least that was what I was thinking at the time. Anyway, all that I remember from trying to figure out the song was that I thought it was in the key of B. Now that I’m much older I know that, yes, there is a B in that chord, but I would have to sit down to the piano to figure out what the other pitches are, because lo and behold, I was not aware, at the age of 12 or 13 or whatever, that one could tune the guitar to anything other than EADGBE.

Oh, Sonic Youth. You have taught me so many things. And maybe this is the point of discover, or attempted discovery that has set me on the path that I am still on today. I’m still the same person, trying to figure out what is going on in all of the things that he hears. I’m still forever sitting at a piano trying to pick apart tone clusters and writing them out.

But, “Schizophrenia” into “(I got a) Catholic Block”? Don’t even try to pretend that that isn’t one hell of a way to open an album. Things are pulled back a little for Kim’s entrance, with “Beauty Lies in the Eye,” a song that has always reminded me of Evol. It just captures a very similar atmosphere as Evol. There is something creepy about the cavernous sound of the percussion and the aimlessly strummed guitar in the background combined with Kim’s half spoken half breathily sung vocal.

Stereo Sanctity

Oh, but “Stereo Sanctity.” How that song will forever remain as my answer to “Oh, you’ve never heard Sonic Youth before?” It will always end up on any mixtape that I make for anyone that needs an introduction to the band. I can play this song on repeat for a day and not even get sick of it ever. The way that it opens with just a cloud of noise and then Lee coming in with his own wall of distortion a 1/2 step above Thurston and not resolving it, or even trying, and the way that you can hear Thurston laugh a little bit about it if you listen closely. The dynamic of the band is perfect throughout this song. I still can’t even describe what it is that is happening in the chorus of the song. The guitar sounds so wobbily, like it is going to fall apart at any moment. It’s as if the song is hanging on by a thread throughout, but somehow they manage to keep it together, at least until the exact midpoint of the song where everything starts to go haywire.

The classic tracks keep coming with “Tuff Gnarl.” One song after another is memorable, but “Tuff Gnarl” finally gives us a song that is immediately recognizable upon the first few notes. That one’s also got the noisy breakdown that sounds like the beginnings of what we’ll get to hear on “Eric’s Trip” or “Total Trash” coming up on “Daydream Nation.”

Tuff Gnarl

The constant back and forth between Thurston and Lee’s straight ahead tunes, where it sounds like they are literally fighting their guitars off their bodies, against Kim’s moodier, sometimes somber material that comes out of “Evol,” creates a good pacing throughout. But, I remember sort of skipping past those slower tunes when I was listening to the album for the first few years. I’d skip right to “Hot Wire My Hearth,” then fast-forward through “Cotton Crown” so that I could get straight to “White Cross” and “Master-Dik.”

If I was ever in doubt about how much I loved Sonic Youth when I was a kid, this was the album that solidified it. Song after song after song of just everything that Sonic Youth has to offer. As a kid I was completely unaware of the social context in which these songs were produced, or what time (I guess I had a little bit of a clue, but I don’t remember thinking of it too much) they were made. The point is, now that I think about it, this album is pretty close to timeless. There really isn’t anything about the sound of the album that screams 1987.

Next up, “Daydream Nation.” I’m going to have to prepare myself for this one. I have a feeling it will be quite long. Wouldn’t be surprised if I have to split that one into 2 posts.

Until then…

2013, albums, miscellaneous, music, personal, thoughts, writing

In Memoriam Sonic Youth: Part III. “Evol”

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Sonic Youth - "Evol"
Sonic Youth – “Evol”

Enter Steve Shelley. Classic lineup now in place. Sonic Youth shows, on “Evol,” that they are interested in writing more orthodox melodies, but they are still not interested in sounding any different. That scary quality that I mentioned with “Confusion is Sex” remains on this album, and I think that it is somewhat amplified on this album.

I hate talking about or even mentioning things about music that are so subjective (re: feelings, images, other personal things that can’t be backed up with facts) but I think that is the reason that I started writing about all the Sonic Youth albums in the first place. My experience with this album was on cassette, and I remember I was in 8th grade listening to this tape on my GPX tape deck with really terrible speakers. The player was sitting on my desk and I was ostensibly “doing homework” (I still remember: it was a project for Italian) but what I was really doing was staring at the tape as it went from one side of the cassette to the other. Over and over and over again.

Tom Violence

Opening with “Tom Violence” starts the album on a perfect note. Thurston is coming into his own as a song writer. In my mind this starts the chain of epic Sonic Youth classics that grows to include “Expressway to yr. Skull (or Madonna, Sean and Me, whatever you want to call it), “Schizophrenia,” “Teenage Riot,” “Silver Rocket,” “Dirty Boots,” and on and on. It’s not so much just T-money either, the rest of the band is starting to find their own voices as well. Lee settles into his role as the SY poet laureate with “In the Kingdom #19” with his spoken word over top of what sounds like SY’s first attempt at a film score. The instruments on that track are not just pushed back in the mix, but they seem to have a gate, or a compressor on them that prevents anything from really breaking through the surface. They are clearly background, diegesis to Lee’s non.

“Death to our Friends” brings slack stringed peculiarity back to the fore in a densely layered track that points to Daydream Nation in the way that the lines combine, and the way that the background noise takes shape. The band’s sonic palette is growing and this album finds them toying a lot more with ambience. If I’m not mistaken this was around the time that they scored the film “Made in U.S.A” a poorly received film that was produced in 1987, the year after “Evol” was released. DGC also re-released the soundtrack as a tape, which of course I heard. All that I remember about it, though, is that two of the song titles are “Mackin’ for Doober,” and “Tuck and Dar.” I don’t know why I remember some of the stuff that I do, but I just do.

Death To Our Friends

For all of the ways that “Bad Moon Rising” was creepy, or unnerving, “Evol” is and more. The structures are tighter. Nothing bleeds into anything, there is no attempt to make an entire album side sound like a suite, but that doesn’t mean that the songs don’t sound like they go together. There’s a little bit more light on this album, so to speak.

For all the difficulty that I had getting into “Bad Moon Rising” I think I had a bit more of a hard time getting into “Evol.” At that time I kept comparing it to “Sister,” which I had been listening to a lot more at the same time. I think that I was focusing a little too much on things like the ending of “Madonna, Sean and Me” when the song just descends into a cloud of reverberation and feedback. What happened to the awesome song? Why did it just disappear like that? Is the chorus going to come back? These were the things that I care about around the time when I first heard “Evol.”

Thankfully I’ve grown up and learned to appreciate this album for the important step in the evolution of Sonic Youth that it is. Only 3 years after “Confusion is Sex” and they are lightyears away from that debut. Next in the series is “Sister,” placing us deep into the territory of “classic” Sonic Youth.

2013, albums, miscellaneous, personal, thoughts, writing

In Memoriam Sonic Youth: Part II. “Bad Moon Rising”

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Sonic Youth - "Bad Moon Rising"
Sonic Youth – “Bad Moon Rising”

I always thought that this album was a strange way, of sorts, to follow up something like “Confusion is Sex.” But I think where that album captured the live energy of the band, this one captures them in the studio conceiving of an actual “album” album.

The fact that all of the songs blend together the way that they do is no mistake, it was a way for the band to make smoother transitions between songs when they were performed live. This was all in a bid to do away with 5 minute tuning sessions in between songs, as they didn’t have an arsenal of guitars on hand at this point in their careers, so these transitions were created to allow Lee or Thurston a few seconds to tune for the next song. The result of this is an album that is linked, obviously, harmonically and melodically as well as in timbre and mood.

I know that it sounds cheesy or stupid or whatever to foist the extramusical jargon onto an album, but I’m going to do it anyway. This album has always felt like Autumn to me. Yes, of course the cover has a lot to do with it, but there is a coldness on this album that isn’t on their debut full-length. The songs are languid, they wander (not in a bad way, by any means), the band is not afraid to have some cleaner guitar sounds. You can definitely hear them moving towards the songs on “Evol” and “Sister” a lot, especially on a track like “I Love Her All The Time,” a song that starts off innocently enough with Thurston floating out the lyrics with some percussion and bass backdrop underneath minimal guitar sounds, strings bent and echoing off into the distance. It isn’t very long before they are off and running into a wall of noise and (I assume) drumstick-wedged-under-guitar-strings type maneuvers.

But the songs here are better shaped than the ones that appear on “Confusion is Sex.” Where they came up with one idea for each of those songs, this album finds them needing to come up with significantly more material and to find interesting ways to get into and out of those ideas. I think that this is maybe the most important album for Sonic Youth as a group of people developing a writing process. It finds a nice balance between free and fixed forms.

For me, I can’t remember when it was that I first heard this album, or where I was when I was listening to it. I think that that must mean that I came to it a bit later. I do remember, however, that upon hearing it I did not immediately get into it. I didn’t immediately “get” it. I was of the mind that “there’s nothing catchy on this one” (I’m hearing myself say that in a whiny voice. I’m sure that if I said that or though that that I would say or think it in a whiny voice). I wanted the action of “Inhuman” and the noise of “Confusion is Next.” Now that I’m (significantly) older I can truly appreciate how good this album actually is.

I think that one of the reasons that I found it difficult to get into this album initially is that I couldn’t figure out which songs were which. Because they all blended together I couldn’t figure out what part that I remembered came from what song. Obviously, that is all pretty meaningless to me now. Who cares where the songs begin and end? It’s best to listen to an album all the way through anyway.

The 2nd side of the album is broken up a little bit more and has some more experimental (that’s a relative term. So when saying that something that Sonic Youth is doing is “more experimental” is saying something). “Justice is Might” slowly comes together, pulling itself up and staggering into form, the lazy guitar and vocal pulled through time by Bob Bert’s solid, uptempo drumming. That one doesn’t hang around too long, and we still have some equally spacey tracks like “Echo Canyon” and “Satan is Boring.”

The star of the show, though, is “Death Valley ’69.” In my mind it’s their first “hit.” It’s really just a classic Sonic Youth song. Thurston and Lydia Lunch (who is from my hometown) lazily sing over top of each other while the band focuses their energy on maintaining a fantastic amount of tension for extended periods before all is lost in a scratchy howl from Lunch.

Fast-forwarding to now, 2013, I started thinking about what all of this meant from an analysis perspective, what with the linking of the songs and the guitar tunings as sort of symbolizing the modulations from track to track if we are to think of the first several songs as really parts of one larger song. I started doing some initial transcriptions of the opening, and taking a post-tonal approach to it just to see what is going on, if I can. What I am finding is that it isn’t as complex as it sounds, but it’s definitely weird. Weird is good. Weird gives me something to look into, a coil to unwind. The thing is is that I have so many things that I want to look at and that I have started or half-finished that I can’t take on any more extra projects. The sketches that I have down for this album though have all the notes that I need to pick up exactly where I left off whenever I am ready and able to pick it up again.

So, in short, this album went from being something that took me a long time to get into when I was (much) younger, to something that I still listen to today and realize that there is more to it than meets the ear. The next album, though, is when things really start to get good.

2013, miscellaneous, music, personal, thoughts

In Memoriam Sonic Youth: Part I. “Confusion is Sex/Kill Yr. Idols”

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Sonic Youth - "Confusion is Next + Kill Yr. Idols"
Sonic Youth – “Confusion is Next + Kill Yr. Idols”

Sonic Youth is undoubtedly the most important band to me personally for a number of reasons. First off they were the first band that I listened to that not many other people I knew were listening to, and more importantly after hearing them I realized that a rock band can do literally whatever they wanted. Why weren’t more artists being as unique as SY? That uniqueness and individuality translated to “this band doesn’t give a fuck!” in my mind and that was a good thing. A very good thing.

I decided that since this band has been such an important part of my life, and I can say in complete honesty that I would not be where I am today if it weren’t for this band, that I would write up a post for each of their albums. Though I’m not aiming to review them (that’s been done, obviously, as some of these albums are almost 30 years old), I would rather go through them chronologically recalling how they affected me when I first heard them, or what I think about when I return to them over and over again after all these years. The posts most likely will not appear day after day in sequence, but I’ll keep the series going until it’s done.

I was still pretty young when my brother got “Confusion is Sex/Kill yr. Idols” (too young to have any money of my own). DGC was in the process of re-releasing SY’s entire back catalog and I remember there was an ad in Spin that had a list of all the albums (up to “Experimental, Jet Set, Trash and No Star”…which will give you some idea of the timeline here) and we were dutifully trying to get all of them.

One of the things that I remember about hearing this album for the first time was that I couldn’t stop listening to it. It was so curious to me. It “sounded like shit,” was my first thought as I was still deep in the throes of a Smashing Pumpkins “Siamese Dream” obsession, with it’s meticulously clean, “perfect” guitar tone and crystal clear production. Sonic Youth, in comparison, sounded dark, mysterious, evil, scary in some ways. Walking to school listening to this album (on a Memorex that I dubbed from the CD) on my Walkman as I walked to school I remember listening to “Shaking Hell,” and the power of Kim Gordon’s voice, with the sparse emptiness of the hollow accompaniment echoing in the distance, coming off as cold, perfectly matching the brisk Fall of Western New York.

“Freezer Burn/I Wanna Be Your Dog” was a favorite, and I sure as hell didn’t know that this was a cover song, let alone who Iggy Pop was. The sheer energy and noise of “Inhuman” was the first time that I heard a song that just used noise as an instrument. Thurston’s atonal yelps sounded at once wrong and perfect. This sounded like music that anyone could do, but at the same time I knew that only Sonic Youth could. This sounded like music that I wanted to make, or at least it was music that wanted me want to make music, but I didn’t know where 90% of the sounds were coming from.

Confusion Is Next

Slack stringed weirdness at the beginning of the title track serves as uneven punctuation as the near-steady (-ish) accelerando throughout the song gets a start before another loud and squealing guitar comes crashing into the track. An entire song, on an actual album, that I was hearing for the first time, that used just cluster chords and gesture as the entire harmonic structure (though I definitely didn’t think of music in these terms when I was 13). Why do you need chords anyway? The song is tense and then to increase the tension they speed it up to a frantic pace after a section in the middle that breaks the song up a little bit. It all makes sense to me now, but then I was just in awe. I guess I still am but in a bit of a different way.

“Brother James,” listening to it now shows more the direction that the band would head in as they moved toward “Bad Moon Rising,” with verse/chorus/verse structure and guitar lines that, though off-kilter and de-tuned, are actual riffs.

Brother James

Listening back to this now I am left thinking something that has been on my mind for a long time. It’s not the elements of a song – the melodies, harmonies, structure, lyrical content etc. – that a person connects with instantly, it’s the timbre. That’s the most exciting part of listening to music, in my opinion. Think of it this way: how often in life do you get to experience something that you have never experienced before, or didn’t think was possible? How often do you get to see something that you have never seen before? Find out that something you couldn’t even conceive of actually exists? How often do you get to hear something that truly doesn’t sound – actually sound – like anything you have ever heard before?

To me, it seems that that is going to be the dividing line for people. The first thing one is confronted with when listening to music is the sound. For some it’s an impenetrable barrier, while for others it is a welcomed change from everything else that we’ve ever experienced. That element of otherness is something that continues throughout most of Sonic Youth’s discography, and I still remember my 12 or 13 year old self getting excited about music stripped to its most basic elements, and how powerful that could be.

2013, albums, music, news

New Track: Lee Ranaldo & The Dust – “Lecce Leaving”

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Lee Ranaldo & The Dust
Lee Ranaldo & The Dust photo by John Von Pamer

It’s still so strange to me to have to write, or even think, the phrase “formerly of Sonic Youth” or “ex-Sonig Youth,” but I think that we are all just going to have to somehow learn to get through it. We can do this. Together.

I’m not sure what makes it more disapointing: that we will not (most likely, but hopefully maybe there is still a possibility of a shred of hope that maybe we will?) hear another note by Sonic Youth, or that the ex-members have really not been making the kinds of albums that I can really get behind.

Ranaldo’s last album (what everyone seemed to refer to as his “first solo album” or, when people that should know better finally realized that it wasn’t his first solo album, his “first song-based solo album” as if what he had done before couldn’t be called songs for some reason?) “Between the Times & The Tides” was something that I could just never get into. I tried, oh how I tried. It just sort of fell flat. I know that that is unfortunate and unfair, in that on its own its actually a decent album. But, there is no way that I (or probably anyone) can listen to it (or anything that he does) without inadvertently (or maybe overtly) comparing it to Sonic Youth’s material.

On October 8 Matador will release Ranaldo’s latest, “Last Night on Earth,” with band The Dust that includes drummer Steve Shelley (Lee Ranaldo: now with 25% Sonic Youth!), Alan Licht and Tim Lüntzel. Listen to the track “Lecce Leaving” below. It immediately sounds richer and fuller than most of the material on “Times and Tides.” The band works well together to create a dynamic sound that is considerably more dense and contrapuntal. Shelley’s drumming adds the perfect touch, as does the slide guitar, steel string acoustic and keys. It’s a 7 minute tune that I almost wish would go on for 20. Though the lyrical content is admittedly darker, I can’t help but think that the arrangement is joyful in parts, or excitable at the very least, until the coda where things resolve in an unsettling, dark manner.

The album is available for pre-order on CD or LP from the Matador store, and as a download from iTunes. And check out Lee’s site here.

Tour dates for Lee Ranaldo & The Dust:

North America :

Tue-Oct-08 Hudson, NY Club Helsinki
Wed-Oct-09 Buffalo, NY Tralf Music Hall
Fri-Oct-11 Toronto, ONT Horseshoe Tavern
Sat-Oct-12 Detroit, MI Trinosophes
Sun-Oct-13 Chicago, IL Empty Bottle
Mon-Oct-14 Madison, WI High Noon Saloon
Tue-Oct-15 Minneapolis, MN The Triple Rock
Thu-Oct-17 Iowa City, IA Gabe’s
Fri-Oct-18 Omaha, NE The Waiting Room
Sat-Oct-19 Lawrence, KS The Bottleneck
Sun-Oct-20 St. Louis, MO The Firebird
Tue-Oct-22 Nashville, TN Exit/In
Wed-Oct-23 Asheville, NC The Grey Eagle
Fri-Oct-25 Brooklyn, NY The Bell House

Europe :

sun 10-Nov-2013 NL GRONINGEN – VERA
Mon 11-Nov-2013 DE HAMBURG – KAMPNAGEL
Wed 13-Nov-2013 DE COLOGNE – GEBAUDE 9
Thu 14-Nov-2013 FR METZ – acoustic show at le musée de la cour d’or
Fri 15-Nov-2013 FR METZ – CAVEAU DES TRINITAIRES – MUSIQUE VOLANTE FESTIVAL
sun 17-Nov-2013 CH LAUSANNE – LE ROMANDIE
Mon 18-Nov-2013 FR FEYZIN – Epicerie Moderne
Wed 20-Nov-2013 FR VILLENEUVE D’ASQ – FESTIVAL TOUR DE CHAUFFE AT LA FERME D’EN HAUT
Thu 21-Nov-2013 UK LONDON – THE GARAGE
Fri 22-Nov-2013 UK CAMBER SANDS – ATP FESTIVAL at Camber Sands
Sat 23-Nov-2013 FR PARIS – Boulogne Billancourt BB MIX FESTIVAL
Mon 25-Nov-2013 FR POITIERS – CONFORT MODERNE
Tue 26-Nov-2013 FR TOURS – TEMPS MACHINE

North America again:

Fri-Dec-06 Portland, OR Doug Fir Lounge
Sat-Dec-07 Vancouver, BC Biltmore Cabaret
Sun-Dec-08 Seattle, WA Barboza
Wed-Dec-11 San Francisco, CA The Chapel
Fri-Dec-13 Los Angeles, CA The Echo