We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: The Eternal
Year: 2009
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A short history of the cosmic quadrangle of Sonic Youth, R.E.M., Wilco & Pavement.
Note: While I’m sure some stuff happened in the 1980s, things really got going in the 1990s.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2373: Sonic Youth – “Walkin’ Blue”
Album: I’m Not There Soundtrack
Year: 2007
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Todd Haynes’s utterly stellar Bob Dylan mythopic, I’m Not There, was accompanied by a soundtrack of Dylan covers that actually had some really good interpretations of his songs, something that wasn’t necessarily guaranteed.
But whether it was Jeff Tweedy covering “Simple Twist of Fate” as if it was on Desire instead of Blood on the Tracks; the Hold Steady pretending like they were the 1973 E Street Band covering “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?,” or John Doe leveraging his gorgeous voice to making “Pressing On” born again, the best covers honored the source material while adding different dimensions on it. Like a cover is supposed to do.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2372: Sonic Youth – “I’m Not There”
Album: Rather Ripped
Year: 2006
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Most bands a quarter-century into their careers slow down. But not Sonic Youth. Not really. Only twice in their career did they take three years to release their next record: the 1995-1998 gap between Washing Machine and A Thousand Leaves and the 2006 gap between Rather Ripped and their final Geffen album, The Eternal.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2371: Sonic Youth – “Incinerate”
Album: Sonic Nurse
Year: 2004
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At some point in the early 2000’s, Sonic Youth came to an unspoken agreement with their fans: the really really experimental stuff would show up on their SYR series, and their Geffen records would feature more song-oriented stuff. As the decade progressed and everybody — including their fan base, natch — got older, those final few records were consistently good, but with the rest of the world long having caught up with them, and a zillion 90s bands having borrowed liberally from their initial innovations, they weren’t ever going to be perceived as anything but elder statespeople.
But they were still Sonic Youth, and they were still great, and every single one of their 2000s records has its pleasures.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2370: Sonic Youth – “Peace Attack”
Album: Murray Street
Year: 2002
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In July of 1999, 27 of Sonic Youth’s guitars got stolen, along with a bunch of equipment and merch. And of course, these were the pre-tuned, utterly-fucked up guitars that they’d been using for years and years at this point. And while the 27 guitars that were stolen was a blow, it wasn’t a killing blow. And they responded with NYC Ghosts and Flowers, an album that I didn’t like — and infamously received a 0.0 in Pitchfork, which, no — which felt like the experimental side of their music had totally overwhelmed their ability to write songs.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2369: Sonic Youth – “The Empty Page”
Album: A Thousand Leaves
Year: 1998
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The fourth time I saw Sonic Youth in concert was on May 24th, 1998 at the Fillmore in San Francisco. They were the headliners that time, and with the exception of the encore, where they pulled out “Death Valley ’69”, pretty much the whole show was from their brand-new album, A Thousand Leaves. Oh, and “Anagrama.”
That said, A Thousand Leaves had only been out for a couple of weeks when I saw the show, and while I respected what they were doing, since I hadn’t seen them since 1991, I would have appreciated “Sugar Kane” or “Washing Machine” or even “The Diamond Sea.” But they had other things in mind. On the other hand, I ended with the coolest of all my cool Fillmore posters.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2368: Sonic Youth – “Hoarfrost”
Album: SYR1: Anagrama
Year: 1997
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As a way to slake their collective thirst for continuing to record more experimental music with out sullying their “commercial” career, in 1996 Sonic Youth established Sonic Youth Recordings, aka SYR.
In 1997, Sonic Youth released two records on SYR: SYR1: Anagrama and SYR2: Slaapkamers met slagroom. As a fan, I dutifully bought both of them, though I don’t think I realized that one of the running conceits of the label was that each record would be titled and have liner notes in a different non-English language, a conceit that ran through the label’s entire history.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2367: Sonic Youth – “Anagrama”
Rockpalast, 1996
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The third time I saw Sonic Youth in concert was May 16, 1995 at the the godawful Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View. They were opening for R.E.M. on the Aneurysm ’95 tour, that tour after 75% of R.E.M. almost died on their 1994 European tour. Rox & I went to this the night after an absolutely amazing Wilco show at Slim’s. I guess I got a bunch of time off from work to do all of this.
Of course, being the opening band — and playing “The Diamond Sea” in its entirety as well as “Washing Machine” — meant that Sonic Youth only played 7 songs total, which was definitely a choice. That said, they definitely went over better than they did when then opened for Neil Young in 1991.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2366: Sonic Youth – “Skip Tracer (Germany, 1996)”
Album: Washing Machine
Year: 1995
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In a way, it was inevitable that Sonic Youth would eventually record a song that was nearly 20 minutes long. But what wasn’t inevitable, of course, was that said 20 minute long song — OK, fine, 19:36 to be precise — would be so good, especially since the last two-thirds was nearly guitars circling each other with perfect interlocking swirls, the audio equivalent of that sea of diamonds before eventually noisying everything up.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2365: Sonic Youth – “The Diamond Sea”
Album: Washing Machine
Year: 1995
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Washing Machine was recorded in Memphis, and it’s possible that being out of their NYC comfort zone in the laid-back South contributed to some of the looseness of the record. Also contributing: the fact that Kim Gordon & Thurston Moore were the proud parents of their first child, Coco, who made the trip to Memphis with them.
In any event, in her memoir, Girl in a Band, Kim says that being a new mother got her thinking about The Shangri-Las, resulting in the loose, laid-back “Little Trouble Girl.”
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #2364: Sonic Youth – “Little Trouble Girl”