when did Sonic Youth peak

but this

They obviously peaked in whichever decade the respondent was 16 in.

― emil.y, Friday, May 12, 2017 1:56 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is precisely otm

Their mid-80s run (Bad Moon Rising/Evol/Sister/Daydream Nation) is great, Goo is a misstep, Dirty is crap, Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star is almost good, and everything afterward is completely irrelevantbrilliant.

fixed

Is the mark of a great band the fact that there is zero consensus on their best work?

This is a great thread, btw, and I sorta regret voting 90s now, because what someone said upthread about the run between NYC and RR is absolutely true, that was a major peak. I just love WM so much, clouded my judgment for a second (because if there is any period I don't like as much it's Goo > Dirty)

Still love this band

This band saved my life. Before I heard "Teen Age Riot" I thought the Mission U.K. was super rockin'. My shit taste was gone in an instant.

The point of SY is that they DIDN'T peak, every song, every riff, was about being in the moment and made the music so quicksilver and instinctive and goofy and transcendent and half-assed and charged and hilarious. Even in the course of one song they flipped from alchemy to catharsis. Genius struck on every record, sometimes frequently, sometimes a couple of eye popping moments in a sea of mediocrity. Some days it's Silver Sessions, some days it's Stereo Sanctity, sometimes it's Or, sometimes it's the muffled, fucked up tape at the start of Schizophrenia, sometimes it's the oscillating amp at the end of Providence, or the crystalline jam of Sympathy for the Strawberry.
Hey, a mildly drunk wannabe critic - what did you expect in a thread on SY?

Hey, a mildly drunk wannabe critic - what did you expect in a thread on SY?

I was going to derail this conversation by asking why people hate on on 'Goo' but I'm going to go find a more gooey thread.

They peaked at various points throughout their career.

Goo is my favorite of the grunge records

Washing Machine was the peak

murray street in my heart of hearts

for those who were around and paying attention - what was it like when Murray Street came out? heavily tied to 9/11 or just exciting new stripped down riff odyssey songs or confirmation that'd they continue on well into the 00s or none of what i just said?

I don't recall an explicit 9/11 connection in the marketing the way there was with, say, Springsteen's The Rising - it was just "here's a new Sonic Youth album." They mentioned the reason behind the album title, of course - that was where their rehearsal studio was located, and it was destroyed on 9/11 or closed thereafter, or something - but that was about the extent of it.

I was around and paying attention when Murray Street came out and I remember it being praised and then I bought it and was disappointed at how boring it was

Sonic youth has a bimodal distribution of goodness in the 80s and 00s. They are one of the greatest rock n roll bands in the history of the genre.

I was around and paying attention when Murray Street came out and I remember it being praised and then I bought it and was disappointed at how boring it was

I listened in a store and thought it sounded boring as fuck. My friend really wanted to see them when she visited me in Montreal, even though she also thought the then-new album was garbage, so I bought a ticket. They completely blew us away live. I bought the album and found it underwhelming. (Derek Bailey's Ballads was my aoty.) Somehow things about it kept drawing me back until it became one of the SY albums I played the most.

murray street hooked me from jump. it's sometimes my favorite SY album which cycles with DN and sister.

00s 4 lyfe

favorite SY album is Sister but I feel like the whole concept of "peaking" is kind of ridiculous tbh. they've made a ton of interesting music since then, and I'm more likely to listen to lots of it than I am to haul Sister out of mothballs. album ranking is...fun, I know, but probably the least interesting way of thinking about an artist's work

tl;dr, 80s

never heard of sonic youth

I listened to them first on the bavarian radio around 1987, it was quite noisy avant stuff, interesting but it did not really convince me. I got hooked in summer 1992 when Dirty was released. It was my entrance ticket to them and I will always consider it as their apex. What I really loved about this album was that there were so many songs on it and that they were so short and full of punch. Long guitar dominated pieces à la Grateful Dead never did it for me. Dirty was like a punk revival, fast songs right into the face of the listener. And at the same time these songs had hooks and the lyrics were fun to decipher in theory. Which I never really did of course. Listening to Dirty on full blast with eight speakers in a car going 120 mph on the German motorway is one of the most rejuvenating experiences in life.

What is the general opinion on Experimental Jet Set? I gather it's nobody's favorite but "Bull in the Heather" was my first exposure to SY in middle school and it rocked

love bull in the heather

i bought it the day it came out - clear vinyl iirc - and did not play it too much after that :/

Not enough love for Evol in this thread, I mean how good an album must be to get praise.

― Van Horn Street, Saturday, May 13, 2017 12:35 AM (fifteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Expressway to your skull, Shadow of a doubt, Tom Violence, Green Light, Secret Girls, that's peak SY for me.

― Van Horn Street, Saturday, May 13, 2017 12:38 AM (fifteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is where the thread peaked

yah, Evol is good. EJSTNS is top 3 for me, still. the quiet/muted production is fresh, coming off of Dirty, and there's dank, deep atmosphere to it. love the variety of songs and raw feel of it. Androgynous Mind, Starfield Road*, Screaming Skull, Bone, Tokyo Eye, and Sweet Shine are great tracks. the only bum song is Self-Obsessed and Sexxee (Disconnection Notice), shit. the drumming on Waist is great, and the unusual, canal boat guitar sounds during the outro of Doctor's orders. also, an interesting album to listen to individual stereo channels, guitar tracks are hard-panned. no Lee vocals, though

*kills

What is the general opinion on Experimental Jet Set?

Bought it week of release, liked it a lot at the time (mentioned it above as a brief return to form after the suckiness of Dirty) but haven't listened to it in years. Might revisit it this weekend, though.

xp EJSTNS = secret origin point for long jammy 00s Sonic Youth

Someone on ILX said something to the effect that "Disconnection Notice" sounded like a super stretched-out version of "Self-Obsessed and Sexxee" and I think that might be true of other MS songs sounding like extended jammy versions of Jet Set songs like "Sympathy for the Strawberry" (Bone) and even "Rain on Tin" (Tokyo Eye)

i posted that a few years ago, about Disconnection Notice resembling Self-Obsessed.. also, compare the instrumental breaks of Becuz and Dude Ranch Nurse -- they're bizarrely similar

NERD is the best of the commercial trilogy.

fuckin autocorrect

Experimental obv

For me, the band peaked for the entire duration of 'Death Valley '69' the very first time that I heard it.

In high school, I listened to all the albums without distinguishing that much between them. Later, I grew to think that EJSTNS was their worst album and never listened to it. (Evol was my favourite for years.) I pulled EJSTNS out again when I read KG's book, though, and was surprised by how well it clicked, although I still wouldn't rank it among their better albums. "Self-Obsessed and Sexxee" is one of my favourite songs on it, actually, despite the "party party party/party all the time" bit.

I sometimes wonder if obsessive SY listening as a teenager set my ear for pitch and tuning back severely and made ear training as an adult that much harder.

w pipeline/kill time

# of album listeners is interesting anecdotally:
https://www.last.fm/music/Sonic+Youth/+albums

For me, the band peaked for the entire duration of 'Death Valley '69' the very first time that I heard it.

now you mention it

xp I get what Flappy Bird was saying about the production on DN sounding flat - took me time initially get it, I had always imagined it sounding more like Television/what Murray Street ended up sounding like (DN being the first SY CD I had bought and thus heard). Now I think it adds to its atmosphere, a claustrophobic element – there's no air on that record at all.

Always thought Sister was overrated - has really high peaks itself but a bunch of duds on the record.

When did SY peak? Answer: during this song (great sound btw AND two basses)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy1pNeuGIlw

Evol, Sister and Daydream are the most consistent. Goo has some really mediocre songs mixed with a few good ones. I do like the breezy-jammy-summery mood and perfected sound of some of their later melodic albums, like Murray Street, which is up there.

xp I get what Flappy Bird was saying about the production on DN sounding flat - took me time initially get it, I had always imagined it sounding more like Television/what Murray Street ended up sounding like (DN being the first SY CD I had bought and thus heard). Now I think it adds to its atmosphere, a claustrophobic element – there's no air on that record at all.

― in twelve parts (lamonti), Sunday, May 14, 2017 2:01 AM (fourteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's crazy the way the drums are mixed! they sound like paper! that's an interesting take i hadn't thought of - I'll listen to DN and reevaluate, and I'll listen to it LOUD...

Flappy, which release of DN are you listening to?

Does anything from 1988 sound like Murray Street?

the 2005 reissue/deluxe edition

and yeah, EVOL and Sister sound great.

Oh, dude, the deluxe edition is remastered really hot. The drums got squashed. The 1993 DGC CD sounds pretty different: it has more space and the drums are cleaner.

oh word, i'll check that out then

thanks for the heads up! i love a lot of the songs on DN but never got obsessed w/ it

You can really hear the difference on e.g. the drum fills after ≈5:05 in "Teenage Riot".

more space

More dynamic range anyway. I sort of get the 'claustrophobic' point.

I guess this is an ultra-conventional opinion but "DN" is still my favorite SY album and has been pretty much since I first heard it, which was a bit after I heard "Goo" and "Dirty", and before I heard "Sister" or "EVOL". "EVOL" through "Goo" is my favorite SY run, though I also like "Murray Street" a lot.

sweet shine is the one on EJTNS that presages the kind of more polite, modal, jammy period of SY from washing machine onwards.

really weird to see thurston rocking a les paul in that conan clip flappy bird posted - if ever there was a band who seemed less likely to be jimmy-paging it up with a low-slung gibson...

i guess i'm a corny received-wisdom fuck cuz my favourite periods of sy are sister-evol-daydream nation and murray street-sonic nurse-rather ripped, although i'll stan for bad moon rising anytime too

the guitar breaks in 'unmade bed' are some of my favourite-ever guitar sounds, not just sonic youth ones