Sonic Youth: The MIchael Jordan of Indie Rock?
Sonic Youth is so good at what they do at this point in their career it is difficult to discuss with each new album exactly how it compares to their vast catalog. Sonic Youth albums never disappoint just as Meryl Streep’s acting never seems to be less than perfect, or Michael Jordan’s game was never anything but dominant. While I find Streep and Jordan boring because of their perfection and lack of surprise, Sonic Youth’s dominance in the underground rock sweepstakes never means they dial it in. Each new album in itself works as a whole (sterling arguments counter to the old ‘the album is dead!’ proclamation) harboring a multitude of thrills and unexpected avenues you suspected someone must have explored somewhere but didn’t.
The Eternal is Sonic Youth’s first album for Matador and a reunion of sorts with Gerard Cosloy whom issued the band’s seminal Bad Moon Rising. The album holds its own identity yet feeds from the playful looseness of Rather Ripped combined with the politico noise pop of Dirty. “Sacred Trixter” is a two minute rush with a breathless Kim Gordon working against grinding/sighing guitar strings. “Antenna” is a melancholic mess of chiming guitars and hooky lyrics much like “Disappearer”. ”What We Know” and “Walkin Blue” are Lee’s strongest songs in years.
Much was made of Jim O’Rourke’s time in Sonic Youth, but I would have to say the albums that have followed his residence are much stronger. Rather Ripped saw the original quartet serve up their best songs since Dirty. The Eternal is similarly focused, appearing as if the band’s core, the four, are what make the machine get up and go. Mark Ibold (Dustdevils, Pavement) plays bass for the band now, as he did on its last tour. Hard to tell from the liner notes if he contributed to the recording, though the bass line on Lee’s “What We Know” sounds decidedly different for the way the bass plays against Thurston and Lee’s guitars.The Eternal will stand as one of 2009’s best, but how do you rate a fantastic album in a fantastic band’s catalog? It’s all subjective - there’s no science - It’s all your heart. . . Ron Asheton forever indeed.
Sonic Youth - Antenna (Link Removed By Request)
ONE LAST NOTE: Concerning the removal of link - I was contacted by Matador with a polite notice to not post songs from Sonic Youth’s new album. Sonic Youth is my favorite band, and in no way was the post meant to hurt. As a record store employee might share a song with a customer is how I saw the post - regardless, I also see the point a small label has in calling it a pirate copy. I love the band, I love the label, I have zero problem removing any link that is asked to be removed. I can only say, go out and buy this album now as well as the Slash autobiography I am reading right now. What a great summer read!!! The Eternal might make the best soundtrack for Slash’s musings on teenage lust and Black Sabbath . . .
Hey Man.
I’m a little sore that my comment to your Germs post didn’t make it through moderation. Sure it was rambling and not entirely relevant, but I thought the link to Dan Graham’s documentary Rock My Religion was mostly on target since it examines, among other things, the same era (although it does so through a New York camera lens).
In any case, the link is entirely relevant here since Sonic Youth contributed to the film’s soundtrack.
Speaking of Sonic Youth, I saw that a Ciccone Youth track was included on Brand Neu!, a compiliation of tributes and covers to the early 1970s German noise rock band Neu!
Funny story about me and Neu!
Last summer I helped my friend John Scane build 14 plywood recessed spotlight housings. The housings were simple five sided boxes with holes cut in one side for the illumination to escape and attachment points for the light fixtures and the rods from which they would be suspended from the ceiling. The boxes were to be installed at Pharmaka, the Downtown LA arts co-op Scane co-founded.
Here’s the tricky part. Pharmaka had been chosen for one of those Cable TV renovation shows, something green on Planet Green, and the boxes needed to be finished and prepped for paint before the next day’s shoot.
It was a long, long day in the shop. We loaded up the van at 1:00am or so, made the run from Scane’s shop in Long Beach to the gallery in LA, made the delivery and turned for home. We were punchy as hell, halfway into our Red Bull boosters, enjoying the muscle ache and fatigue that comes only after you’ve pushed yourself further than you thought you could go and done more than you set out to do, when, from near the chatter of old tires on cracked freeway and inside the shush of wind on steel and glass, there came a steady driving drum beat, simple and insistent, and a steady driving guitar note, chikk-chikk, chikk-chikk, chikk-chikk, on and on, then another guitar came in from somewhere over the top, soaring near and far, as simple as insistent as the rhythm underneath.
I turned up the volume. The music went on and on and so did we, rolling down the night-vacant freeway, under the soaring 110 Freeway overpass and on to the lights of the harbor.
We flew like that for ten minutes or so, the song lifting us off the road and out of our bodies and then the song faded back under the wheel sound and wind noise and another began and it wasn’t the same and I said, “Goddamnit, man. Why don’t the DJs ever tell you the name of the song when you need to know?”
The next morning I visited KCRW’s website and browsed the playlist and eventually figured out we had heard Neu!’s “Hallo Gallo“. From 1972 or do. How in the world had I missed it for so long?
Are you the Redding, CA Lars Peterson from years back? If so, it is I, your long lost friend Conrad….if it is not, thanks for the incredible story….I need to hear MUCH more Neu! for certain…
Just out of curiousity, how long have you been doing this?