Sonic Youth Finally Write A Song
June 4, 2006 4:29 PM   Subscribe

Signs of the Impending Apocalypse. After 25 years , Sonic Youth finally put down their screwdrivers and write a decent song.
posted by sgt.serenity (44 comments total)

This post was deleted for the following reason: yourfavoritebandsucksfilter



 
They've written plenty of decent songs before.
posted by juiceCake at 4:33 PM on June 4, 2006


Sonic middle-aged.
posted by 517 at 4:35 PM on June 4, 2006


Funny that "much more conventional than usual" translates into "decent".
posted by interrobang at 4:37 PM on June 4, 2006


-1 Flamebait
posted by furtive at 4:40 PM on June 4, 2006


They've written plenty of decent songs before.

My friend , i agree with you , but up until now , every 'decent song' has been pulverised by some rambling dissonant guitar noodling - did we not all weep as the promise of songs such as 'silver rocket' petered out into terrible , unlistenable noise ?
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:40 PM on June 4, 2006 [1 favorite]


Sonic I-should-have-started-my-401k-sooner-instead-I-wrote-this-album.
posted by 517 at 4:41 PM on June 4, 2006


juicecake: "They've written plenty of decent songs before."

"1987." You forgot to say "1987." They've written plenty of decent songs before 1987.

That was a long time ago. What was it about the end of the eighties that made so many bands suck? Of course, SY was doomed from the beginning. They're from NY. It was bound they'd take themselves far too seriously at some point. At this point, I'm as sick of hearing Thurston Moore talk about his record collection as I am of hearing Michael Stipe sing about his feelings.

But I guess this song isn't so bad.
posted by koeselitz at 4:43 PM on June 4, 2006


I have no jokey way of saying this, but I'll say it again anyway: Thurston Moore is 47 years old. Kim is 53 years old.
posted by donth at 4:44 PM on June 4, 2006


It isn't so good, either. Whither the trippy?
posted by dontoine at 4:45 PM on June 4, 2006


She looks Yummy.
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:46 PM on June 4, 2006


Wha? Both Murray Street and Sonic Nurse were great. "I Love You Golden Blue" is one of their best songs ever. Fuck you.
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 4:48 PM on June 4, 2006


I have no jokey way of saying this, but I'll say it again anyway: Thurston Moore is 47 years old. Kim is 53 years old.
posted by donth at 7:44 PM EST on June 4 [+fave] [!]


And?
posted by juiceCake at 4:48 PM on June 4, 2006


It's that time. That's right. It's time for an Indie Rock Rrrumble! Quirky opinions about well-regarded bands? All are welcome! As long as they are delivered with BRRUUTALITY!
posted by furiousthought at 4:48 PM on June 4, 2006


sounds to me like they've been listening to keith and charlie for a change ... this could be interesting
posted by pyramid termite at 4:48 PM on June 4, 2006


did we not all weep as the promise of songs such as 'silver rocket' petered out into terrible , unlistenable noise ?

Uh, no.

koeselitz- personally I think SY had their best work from Evol to Dirty with Sister & Daydream Nation being the highpoint of their career. Stuff before that is really hit or miss, haven't bothered to listen to anything since whatever lame album they put out after Dirty.

In other news: your favorite band sucks.
posted by papakwanz at 4:49 PM on June 4, 2006


She looks Yummy.

She looks like my grandma with nice legs.

In other news: your girlfriend is a skank.
posted by papakwanz at 4:50 PM on June 4, 2006


i'm leg man.
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:52 PM on June 4, 2006


a
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:53 PM on June 4, 2006


I'm leg man.
posted by sgt.serenity at 7:52 PM EST on June 4


What, do you go around lifting one up for everyone? Big 'L' on your chest?
posted by Mean Mr. Bucket at 4:55 PM on June 4, 2006


i'm leg man.
posted by sgt.serenity at 7:52 PM EST on June 4 [+fave] [!]

Part of the Tick universe?
posted by juiceCake at 4:58 PM on June 4, 2006


Sonic Minivan
posted by 517 at 4:59 PM on June 4, 2006


I'm leg man.

I'm Fan Man!
posted by loquacious at 5:02 PM on June 4, 2006


Honestly, aren't we all over discordant, tweaky noise? I mean, wasn't that sort of guitar-chaos supposed to be just a backlash against the establishment's syrupy-pop music to begin with? Can't we be done with that now? please?

anyway, it's got a good beat and I can dance to it.
posted by Parannoyed at 5:02 PM on June 4, 2006


A friend of mine insisted that I get SY Dirty in the early 90s. I hated it, but I hated it in the same way that I hate the Rolling Stones and most U2. I recognize that all three bands are great at what they do and have devout followings, I just couldn't get into them.

SY is one of those bands for me that I would probably have loved if I had a different ear.
posted by SteveTheRed at 5:05 PM on June 4, 2006


Funny, I thought THIS was the real sign of the impending apocalypse, although perhaps the two are related...?
posted by twsf at 5:14 PM on June 4, 2006


i'm leg man.

No, this is leg man.
posted by brain_drain at 5:16 PM on June 4, 2006


Sonic MILF.
posted by soiled cowboy at 5:17 PM on June 4, 2006


The hair in the hole in my head
Too bad the scene is dead
Memories in the shadow
Back in time again
posted by 3.2.3 at 5:19 PM on June 4, 2006


It was an okay track and worth a listen, but then, the last time I was excited about music was probably The Washington Squares' first album, so consider the source.

Kim Gordon certainly does have nice wheels for a middle-aged lady, though...
posted by pax digita at 5:25 PM on June 4, 2006


furiousthought: "It's that time. That's right. It's time for an Indie Rock Rrrumble! Quirky opinions about well-regarded bands? All are welcome! As long as they are delivered with BRRUUTALITY!"

Yeah, yeah, sure. But the thing is, this isn't Led Zeppelin or the Beatles or even REM I'm trashing here. (At least not directly.) It's Sonic Youth. Calling fucking Sonic Youth "well-regarded" is, well, to pay attention only to rock critics. Almost no one but rock critics listens to Sonic Youth, let's all admit it. Now, there are plenty of really great obscure bands (and if I were Thurston "I really dig Sun Ra" Moore, I would list all of them right here); but obscurity (now more than ever) can also be covered with the stink of pretension.

Sonic Youth released one of the best-- maybe the best-- of the few no wave albums. Even aside from that, "confusion is sex" is just really good. So is the self-titled EP. But it only took a few years for SY to start seeing themselves as a 'serious rock art' band. Confusion was next; then came the crap.

Pretension is killing independant music today. It's the reason there hasn't been a decent band making music in New York, for example, since SY made "Sister." Ironically, thereafter Sonic Youth have spent years as the king and queen of indie rock pretension. It'll take a long time for them to live that off.

papakwanz: "In other news: your favorite band sucks."

Can does not suck.
posted by koeselitz at 5:28 PM on June 4, 2006


this song = meh.
posted by delmoi at 5:35 PM on June 4, 2006


Aren't they the band that did "Pass the Dutchie"? I liked that song.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:36 PM on June 4, 2006


yeah, sonic nurse is awesome, don't count them out yet...tho this song doesn't have enough discordance to sound like sonic youth. sounds a lot like dinasour junior, no?
posted by es_de_bah at 5:37 PM on June 4, 2006


"JC", off of Dirty is, bar none, the best song ever invented. You know it's true, you're just trying to fight it.

What's with the Sonic Youth hate anyway? They're just doing a thang, you can like or not, but sheesh.

And that song? They just sound OLD.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:42 PM on June 4, 2006


Even aside from that, "confusion is sex" is just really good.

Amen. Really, really fucking good. I also dug "Bad Moon Rising" as well. I was less interested in Thurston's take on 80s pop on "Sister" or "Daydream Nation", but both of those albums had some decent moments on them. They mostly had jumped the shark by "Goo", even though they were still a pretty enjoyable live act throughout the 1990s (last I saw them was in 2004, and they were still honestly, pretty fucking great).

Honestly, Fuck SY's art rock pretense, and whatever axes people have to grind about it or them. That shit doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the music.
posted by psmealey at 5:53 PM on June 4, 2006 [1 favorite]


Is there an emoticon for "meh"?
posted by peeedro at 5:55 PM on June 4, 2006


Knocking SY's dissonance is like criticizing Jackson Pollock for being messy.
posted by davebush at 6:01 PM on June 4, 2006


some people like sonic youth. some people do not. some people like some sonic youth. some people like other sonic youth. some people think that having a hot girl in the band is relevant to the music they make. wow.

flagged as offensive flame bait.
posted by brevator at 6:02 PM on June 4, 2006


.
posted by shoepal at 6:03 PM on June 4, 2006


Sorry. One more thing...

parannoyed: "Honestly, aren't we all over discordant, tweaky noise? I mean, wasn't that sort of guitar-chaos supposed to be just a backlash against the establishment's syrupy-pop music to begin with? Can't we be done with that now? please?"


If you think the noise of punk (and no wave is only a subset, maybe a final refinement, of the noise of punk) is only a backlash against 'the establishment' and 'syrupy-pop music,' then I don't know how hard you were listening. That's sort of a Sex Pistols view of punk; very facile.

Punk music had its genesis in the rebellion against decayed pop forms; but it extended very, very far beyond that. Witness the fact that plenty of really great, loud, obnoxious bands were very quickly moving in the direction finally formalized by REM in the mid-eighties; the direction of beautiful, orchestrated, harmonious tunes. These bands were not protesting merely the harmonic forms, but the sentiments behind them. As the venerable Mark E. Smith once put it, quite succintly, when speaking of current pop music:

"HEY THERE, FUCK FACE!
HAVE A MESSAGE FOR YA!
RUB IT OUT! KILL IT!
Too much romantic here
I destroy romantics, actors!
KILL IT! KILL IT!"

See, that's not sentiment against corporate machines so much as sentiment against sentiment, against fakery and snobbery and anything not truly generated in the head and heart. It's a perennial human longing, the longing for truth rather than disrespectful soothing, but the urgent way it's been voiced is unique to our time, maybe because of our machine-age alienation, maybe because of our spiritual decay that has resulted from the misunderstanding of freedom.

In any case, all of this probably has something to do with another facet about punk music, something it shares with other 'heavy' music (like metal and even hip-hop at times): the creation of beauty out of chaos. It's difficult to explain this, but think of it this way: a huge chunk of twentieth-century music, even most popular music nowadays, sounds like chaos to the uninitiated. We're all familiar with the image of the parent telling the kid to 'turn down that noise,' and our civilization has seen one generation succeed another several times in the picture. In some ways, twentieth-century music is about that chaos, and about finding music in it. Punk was about covering depth, meaning, beauty, truth, in layers of fuzz so that only an honest, true human being could see through it. That is, something like hiding the gems of human achievement under the rubble of industrial society. From this perspective, maybe it makes sense when I tell you that, if something sounds like noise, sometimes you're just not listening closely enough. Sonic Youth knew this from the start.

"I maintain that
Chaos is the future
And beyond it is freedom
Confusion is next and next after that is the truth
You gotta cultivate what you need to need
Sonic tooth
Sonic tooth
Sonic tooth

Stick your fingers
In your mouth
Squeeze your tongue
And wrench it out
From its ugly fucking cancer
Its ugly fucking cancer
Root
You gotta cultivate what you need to need
Sonic tooth
Sonic tooth
Sonic tooth

Tell nothing but THE TRUTH..."

See, the truth is painful and raw and difficult to listen to. But sometimes it can have a moment of beauty. The moment when apparent confusion and chaos turns out to be well-orchestrated, beautiful, simple: that is what punk music is for. "If it's too loud, then you're too old" means: if you think this is merely noise, you're not listening very closely. And that's just lazy.
posted by koeselitz at 6:08 PM on June 4, 2006 [3 favorites]


SONIC YOUTH ARE SHIT
posted by fire&wings at 6:12 PM on June 4, 2006 [1 favorite]


Sonic Youth are one of the greatest rock bands ever. They are perhaps the only band left producing original music. Certainly, they've done it longer and more consistently than any band alive or dead.
posted by about_time at 6:15 PM on June 4, 2006


See, the truth is painful and raw and difficult to listen to. But sometimes it can have a moment of beauty. The moment when apparent confusion and chaos turns out to be well-orchestrated, beautiful, simple: that is what punk music is for. "If it's too loud, then you're too old" means: if you think this is merely noise, you're not listening very closely. And that's just lazy.
posted by koeselitz at 2:08 AM GMT on June 5 [+fave] [!]



SONIC YOUTH ARE SHIT
posted by fire&wings at 2:12 AM GMT on June 5 [+fave] [!]


There's your dissonance right there!
posted by TwoWordReview at 6:23 PM on June 4, 2006


Nearly every Sonic Youth album has at least one or two amazing songs on it, some have even more. And I love the dischord. They make it work. I can't really explain it, but who can say why certain music works for some people and not for others?
posted by Joey Michaels at 6:24 PM on June 4, 2006


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