best Sonic Youth album of the '00s

Murray Street, hands down. Shows around NYCG&F and Murray Street were also both amazing, the band was really on a roll. All these are solid, but in my mind Murray Street is one of the best records of the decade, most of the good sides of the band and really minimal moments of the bad, i.e.: only one kind of forgettable Kim song, a GREAT Kim song (Sympathy for the Strawberry is my favorite Kim song of this decade, at least), and no duds from Thurston or Lee. Rain on Tin definitely being the highlight, some real primo guitar shit. It's easy for people to criticize this band, but really, who else has created a more consistently worthwhile body of work in rock?

uh, lotsa people

Like?

as far as sheer size + consistency, i agree w/ grandavis, but also i am a huge SY stan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDPLKLnmI0A

this fucking song

I'm actually the wrong person to ask cause I think sonic youth had a run of 4-5 good records and then a vast wasteland but I can pretty quickly name 10 bands/musicians with consistently worthwhile bodies of rock and that's without thinking very hard

rolling stones
black sabbath
swans
ac/dc
ramones
the fall
wire
the cramps
neil young
brian eno

^ sonic youth's highpoints may be higher than some of these folks, but over the course of a career I'd put them as more consistent bringers of joy

can't decide b/w sonic nurse and murray st but it's definitely one or the other.

also (fans of their lyrics are welcome to disagree) since sonic youth's big accomplishment was to slap branca-tunings onto riff-rock they really don't have to work as hard to be "consistent" than more singer-songwriterly type artists. they're more of a Dead type thing.

wtf brian eno hasn't done anything worthwhile in 15 years, black sabbath hasn't done anything worthwile in 25 at least, and the ramones had one album that they made 300 times, what are you talking about??

Look, no real problem with any of the bands you listed, and of course, I understand why some people don't really like Sonic Youth, but this is the key for me:

more consistently worthwhile

I'll give you maybe The Fall and Neil, but I don't think any of the other people on that list come close. Maybe some highs as high or higher (everyone has their thing, so yeah, all of these bands have great records), but most can't touch the overall track record in my mind.

yeah -- most of those people have like entire 5-10 years stretches where they made records that only the biggest diehards care about, or a real clear shark jumping point after which they're mostly enjoyed as a live act, SY for all their patchiness don't really have any albums i can say i never want to hear again or would not reccomend to any kind of fan.

also (fans of their lyrics are welcome to disagree) since sonic youth's big accomplishment was to slap branca-tunings onto riff-rock they really don't have to work as hard to be "consistent" than more singer-songwriterly type artists. they're more of a Dead type thing.

Well, Lee Ranaldo takes his sub-Beat stuff very seriously, and I like his stuff least. But they've been pretty consistent since they abandoned their fascination with death-porn. Among the reasons why I don't like The Eternal is the higher than usual howler-to-ooh-nice-bumper-sticker-slogan ratio ("Anti-Orgasm" and the one about the "rapacious" vagina howler).

i agree completely. the only other band I can think of with this kind of consistency is Stereolab (who you might well find boring and dull, but they put out albums on a consistent basis whose quality was, overall, pretty high, I think), and maybe Yo La Tengo.

I don't know The Dead's music well, but I'd listen more closely if they sang about rapacious vaginas. Context matters, etc.

also (fans of their lyrics are welcome to disagree) since sonic youth's big accomplishment was to slap branca-tunings onto riff-rock they really don't have to work as hard to be "consistent" than more singer-songwriterly type artists. they're more of a Dead type thing.

See, that's pretty lazy criticism, but whatever. It is hard to be consistent in any appreciable way, no matter what the criteria, for almost 30 years. Slight it any way you want, but they are approaching (really they've been there for a while) totally uncharted territory when it comes to this kind of thing.

wtf brian eno hasn't done anything worthwhile in 15 years, black sabbath hasn't done anything worthwile in 25 at least, and the ramones had one album that they made 300 times, what are you talking about??

― akm, Wednesday, June 17, 2009 4:37 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

the last good sonic youth album I heard was in '87 so by your count they're not that far behind sabbath!

this argument runs the risk of becoming "people who love sonic youth think sonic youth are better than other bands"

true --- but even on some boring 'critical' barometer like Pazz & Jop, there aren't many acts who place there as regularly 20 years later as they did when they first appeared that didn't have lengthy fallow periods or records nobody will defend (thinking of Dylan and Elvis Costello types here)

Edward, you're not far off, these arguments generally devolve to circular and pointless back and forths, but I was trying to think of other bands in this context. I am not arguing that anyone should claim they are the greatest band, just acknowledge that, for what they do, it is pretty amazing that they have maintained the level of achievement that they have.

Uh, what some dude said as well.

they have stayed hipper longer, I'll give you that

excellent fashion sense

I think part of SY's strength over time is that, for all the talk of them being innovative or groundbreaking or whatever, they've really never seemed that ambitious or adventurous, just coasting along and tweaking their sound in small ways each time, rarely going overboard in one direction or the other. That's usually a recipe for a really boring career w/ trad rock/pop bands but their sound is just unique enough that I'm really happy to hear them coast.

Which is all really great artists do past a certain age. Whether you care about these tweaks and coasts is up to you.

excellent fashion sense

That is funny.

The closest Sonic Youth came to a "headed for the ditch" period was NYC G&F and Goodbye 20th Century, but they backed off to groove-ville for better or worse fast.

as much as I like the CD-R I made of my fave O'Rourke-era tracks, it might have been kinda impressive if they stayed full avant for awhile rather than turning into a SY tribute band.

maybe the mistake was replacing O'Rourke - someone with their own ideas and ego - with Mark fucking Ibold.

Which is all really great artists do past a certain age.

I disagree with this as a blanket statement. Miles Davis, Igor Stravinsky, and John Cage, for example, were all doing new and innovative things in middle or old age.

I even have the feeling that Sonic Youth was trying to with some of the SYR projects and avant-garde collaborations. It's just that so many of their efforts seem . . . lazy.

I intend nothing on ILM as a blanket statement. Except this: Lee Ranaldo writes fucking shitty poetry.

Like, if they actually grafted Branca tunings (which means more than tuning to EEFFGG etc) onto riff-rock, that might be interesting.

xpost haha

murray st. would be a shoe-in for me if the last three songs were as good as the first four. i guess sonic nurse is my favorite of these? i like them all though, even nycg&f (which is probably tied with exp. jet set as my least favorite sy lp).

murray street; 'rain on tin' should be used to teach jammy guitar clinics and also it is awesome start to finish ('plastic sun' is kind of an aberration in style but i think it's a welcome respite considering how obliterating 'karen revisited' is); only heard parts of rather ripped and i wasn't digging it much

"Murray" for me.

It's kind of amazing how little consensus there is on which SY albums rule/suck. Put me in the "Ripped" >>>>> "Nurse" category. "Nurse" just didn't interest me at all (neither did "A Thousand Leaves"); the songs just don't go anywhere. At least "NYCG&F" had some spark.

weird, Nurse is like the lost sister of Daydream Nation for me; an album about textures

Sonic Nurse, for me, sounds like the leftovers from Murray Street. Same for The Eternal, which is kind of a lesser version of Rather Ripped.

Rather Ripped >> Murray Street >>>>>>>>>>>> The Eternal >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> everything else.

i've only heard murray and nyc g&f of all these. murray is an enjoyable record. i hate nyc ghosts so, so much.

Easy - Rather Ripped! Their best album ever IMHO.

weird, Nurse is like the lost sister of Daydream Nation for me; an album about textures

yeah this is what i tried to say earlier. i think it might be their best sounding record of all honestly.

interesting how their critical stock seems to have been on the up all decade

i mean, i think NY ghosts + flowers is actually a pretty good record

but the way it made everyone think about sonic youth was probably more realistic, fair than the unequivocal elder-statesman treatment they've had since

OK I've listened to all of these A LOT over the past week-plus. I love them all to varying degrees but here's my order:

The Eternal - Yup. After many listens, only that Corso song has failed to imprint itself onto my internal hum matrix. Key: not many slow ones and even those give up swoon-worthy melodies. Song after song, it just keeps dropping the rock on your head in both midtempo "Total Trash" and speedy "Mary-Christ" modes. Plus they're still growing as vocalists, with Kim very Yoko and some impressive swarmonies on "Walkin Blue." Finally, it's the second great album this decade (that I know of) to mention Bobby Pyn. Love it love it love it. Best song: "Anti-Orgasm," their entire career distilled into six fun-then-soothing minutes.

Rather Ripped - This now sounds like a warm up for The Eternal but with a sleepier second half.

NYC Ghosts & Flowers - Easily their most underrated record. Detractors treat it as they would a pure noise record. But the structures are there even if they're not verse-chorus-verse. More like builds and bracing shifts in sonic space. And altogether more disquieting than their early horrorshows.

Sonic Nurse - Sounds like it's scared of being Rather Ripped. Just too goddamned long. And luckily xhuxk won't visit this thread to chew me out for preferring its overall consistency to the high points on...

Murray Street - Great record until Lee shouts "Karen!" after which it takes a serious nosedive.

But they're such a great band that these are all nearly imperceptible shades of one another. In fact, they're so great that I no longer see the value in ripping on their pre-Shelley art racketeering. It's all gotten sucked up into one fantastic song. The eternal indeed.

Murray Street - Great record until Lee shouts "Karen!" after which it takes a serious nosedive.

HAHA. This is hilarious. :)

same could be said of A Thousand Leaves too

NYC Ghosts is definitely my least favorite of these 5, maybe least favorite of all their proper albums, but it's still really not that bad. I remember hearing live recordings of early instrumental versions and it was all kind of exciting, almost kind of a return to no wave after the theft of their instruments. But once the beat poetry vocals were added and they got in the studio, I feel like something went wrong in the production/performances and even songs that should be awesome like the title track turned out kind of tepid.

murray street stands as the victor for me, but i don't figure i'll be inclined to pull it out and listen to it any time soon. when listening to sonic youth these days, i like to relate the music i'm hearing to the band's capacity to innovate freely and influence by virtue of breaking boundaries and setting new parameters. i hear that kind of thing in the earlier records for sure. the 2000s records are a testament to the endurance and longevity of the band and they do plenty of nice things, but mostly just fill in the numbers for me.

Kevin is right except for his mistakenly switching his blurbs for Rather Ripped and The Eternal.

Voted Murray Street at last. Not only one of their best of all times but it is also probably the best record if you wanna introduce SY to someone, which is kind of an odd combination.

Sonic Nurse, not even close. My second-favorite of theirs, actually, after the inevitable Daydream Nation. But yes, I like all these records to varying degrees, most a lot. Rather Ripped is my least-fave, maybe because "Incinerate" sounds so much like a great single that the rest kind of drifts away for me. But I bet I'd like it if I played it again.

But I bet I'd like it if I played it again

This is the case with most SY, methinks. I really dislike Washing Machine, and am comfortable saying so, but I don't want to replay it because I know I'll change my mind.