Sonic Youth: Classic or Dud/S&D?

Psychic Hearts
"Teen Age Riot"
"Winner's Blues"
some other tracks on Jet Set
I remember Murray St. being good...
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As mentioned in the Dirty thread, I'm diving into them today (I had a bad experience with being disappointed by Daydream Nation back in the days when I should have been spending CD-money on food and have mostly avoided them ever since). Anyway, I am almost through my first pick - Washing Machine - and I think I might like it even better than Dirty!

Washing Machine is a masterpiece.

S tier:
Sister

A tier:
S/t
Confusion Is Sex
Bad Moon Rising
Evol
Daydream Nation
Goodbye 20th Century
Murray Street

B tier:
Goo
Dirty
Washing Machine
SYR 1, 2, 3, 6, 7
A Thousand Leaves
Hidros 3
Sonic Nurse
Rather Ripped

C tier:
NYC Ghosts & Flowers
SYR 8, 9

D tier:
Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star
The Eternal

E tier:
The Whitey Album

a thousand leaves
washing machine
murray street
daydream nation
sonic nurse
evol
bad moon rising
sister
dirty
goo
rather ripped
nyc ghosts
confusion
experimental

The wild thing about this band is how many of their albums could top someone's list and not earn a raised eyebrow.

Evol
Daydream Nation
Dirty
Sonic Nurse
Goo
Sister
Murray Street
Rather Ripped
Confusion Is Sex
A Thousand Leaves
Washing Machine
Bad Moon Rising
Experimental Jet Set
The Eternal
NYC Ghosts & Flowers

It's a really solid catalogue all things considered, like only the bottom three there I'd rate below a 7/10.

You guys and Jet Set, ha ha...

I'm revisiting it now – the core of the album (I guess from "Screaming Skull" thru "Tokyo Eye") is the stuff for me; that minimal punk-blooze... pretty much all the SY I need.

tokyo eye is really good

both points otm

Sister
EVOL
Bad Moon Rising
Confusion Is Sex
Sonic Youth
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Don't care

Probably because I was also checking out a bunch of Krautrock for the first time when it came out new; I always thought 'Washing Machine' was SY's version of that type of music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvmTidDMi74

Glad you found the Heetderks paper helpful, Deflatormouse. I thought it was very good myself.

Thank you. Yes, Heetderks OTM. If you were to post more articles like this to ILM I'd probably enjoy them.

The part where he talks about how Thurston envied the HC kids for their narrower frame of reference is maybe a clearer explanation of SY's own limitations than I've come across. That is to say I agree Harold Bloom is a useful framework in their case, or vice-versa.

Thanks all for info and links on the live sets. I am mostly interested in early examples of this but these are great, too.

In/Out/In sounding great on this spring morning. Has the prettiness of the latter era, but is a bit looser, jammier, rawer.

Been exploring more of their career lately. The "Confusion is Sex" run up to "Sister" is just so so good, skipping DN (because I know it well) and then onto their Grunge years atm. Goo/Dirty and it's kinda interesting how they've pared down their sound a bit more and are settling into very slightly different 'groove', if you like. The albums are just longer and I think it's somewhat harder to keep my interest.

On Experimental, Jet, rn.

The "Confusion is Sex" run up to "Sister" is just so so good

i revisit this era every so often and rarely ever want to skip any of it. it is so good! in fact i find it hard to get beyond these albums, but will give later eras another go soon.

The "Confusion is Sex" run up to "Sister" is just so so good

Yeah, it's great stuff. I had the same reaction when re-listening to Sonic Youth a while ago. After that they somehow lost their intensity - I genuinely don't understand the appeal of the sprawling 'Daydream Nation'.

It’s Dirty that starts to lose me altho I can stay awake for most of it; I find Jet Set all but unlistenable and while I do understand the appeal of the stuff from Washing Machine on, it just doesn’t stick with me.

Sister > the perfectly pleasant but basically empty shit that came after it

Sister, Goo, and Rather Ripped are my SY tentpoles. Everything else depends on what mood I'm in, but I haven't yet ever found an occasion that makes me like NYC Ghosts.

i really don’t understand not liking washing machine

After that they somehow lost their intensity - I genuinely don't understand the appeal of the sprawling 'Daydream Nation'.

― Portsmouth Bubblejet, Sunday, 3 July 2022 bookmarkflaglink

So far I'm kinda like DN is the album they were really trying hard to repeat post-the year punk broke (lol) and are failing so far. I had to stop after "Bone" on Jet Set and revisit Daydream Nation and there is nothing like "Teenage Riot" or "Eric's Trip" in these albums. That marriage of tunes and tuneage craziness. Not saying these are hits with a bit more promotional money but...The 7 minute + epics are all still really working for me. How good are those last minutes of "The Sprawl". The coming back and out from those dissonant jams on "Total Thrash" are just perfect.

But I am onto Washing Machine next.

How good are those last minutes of "The Sprawl".

Not trolling, but I think those minutes are dull… just sort of flaccid noodling. At least Jet Set is tight and focused, which is when I think this band is at their best.

Love all of it.

I remember interviewing Lou Barlow and him telling me DN was where he stepped off the train - that he found its considered, sculptured big rock moves boring and like Led Zeppelin. I loved SY so much that for me it's just a different vibe, a different headspace they were in, but the slow building insurgent classic majesty of those tracks has echoes, I feel, in Washing Machine and Murray Street. But I love Jet Set equally, for all its haphazard, in-the-moment invention - it's equally valid. They really did contain multitudes.

"Not trolling, but I think those minutes are dull… just sort of flaccid noodling."

The layer of distortion underneath the noodly melody is what keep it from being just that.

Also what pulls it away from a casual rock move, too.

One of my all time faves bands but DN never hits for me apart from a strong opening

I'm a huge SY fan and own every album (many on multiple formats) plus plenty of inessential annex and solo releases. Hell, I even have three SY posters from their NZ tours in my apartment (DN, Dirty and Thousand Leaves). All of which is to say - I take ruminations on the best SY album very, very seriously.

Their best record is EVOL. Hands down. It perfectly melds the spooky atmospherics of Bad Moon Rising with the nascent pop songcraft they would later master on the next three albums. All the essential SY elements are there - touches of the avant-garde, blistering noise, interlocked tremelo guitars, pop culture references galore, and a detached winking cool. It perfectly captures a band in transition, experimenting with their sound and songwriting, and absolutely nailing it. The atmosphere is unreal, and Kim's vocal work is astounding. They wouldn't sound so assured in their willingness to push the boundaries again until Washing Machine, which I consider EVOL's sister album from the '90s.

Incidentally Steve Shelley hates both of those albums...

When did Shelley say that??

Thought this was a VU thread for a second.

Also does Lou Barlow really hate Led Zeppelin? Thought I recalled him being a Rush fan at the least.

he found its considered, sculptured big rock moves boring and like Led Zeppelin

lol

i found its considered, sculptured big rock moves boring too, though not like LZ. it's one of the very, very few records i ever returned for a refund.

I love Sonic Youth. From EVOL through A Thousand Leaves I found songs to treasure and often entire album. I admire how they refined what they learned about verse-chorus-verse on those early '90s albums for Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped. To my ears they work like 1970s Buñuel: what looks conventional has unclear if not sinister undertones.

been listening to sonic youth on the subway a lot, it goes well with the screeching of the trains

I wonder if SY have ever claimed their sound to be inspired by NYC subway screeching the way Iggy talks about the sound of the Ford assembly line inspiring the Stooges

To my ears they work like 1970s Buñuel: what looks conventional has unclear if not sinister undertones.

Great analogy!

My problem with SY post-DN is that I never came to them for songs. Sure, Sister had some stuff that was "catchy" in a bent, rattling-itself-apart way, but it was always about the guitar tones and the unexpected noises and things just kind of dissolving. Almost every "experimental" band, if they last long enough, eventually decides that the next logical step is to write conventional rock/pop songs and keep just enough of the weirdness that used to be their whole thing lingering as an accent, or a gentle whiff on the breeze, to placate critics and longtime fans. It happened to Pere Ubu, it happened to Sonic Youth, it happened to Einstürzende Neubauten, probably many more too.

And I understand! People like songs! But the results are almost always much less interesting than what came before. Like, I'm sure there are people whose favorite Pere Ubu album is Cloudland...but those people are wrong.

Pere Ubu were never wholly “experimental,” though, right(?) Experimental weirdness was never their “whole thing”?

Even at their most commercial, though, Sonic Youth never made something as radio-focussed as "Waiting For Mary". There's a lot of abrasive guitar on the 90s records, even on the more structured songs.

while I understand and sympathize with DN skeptics and critics, I've always had a soft spot for it. But as someone who was "there", it was not well received by many of the band's fans at the time (otoh they got a ton of new ones)

I also have to say that the coda of "The Sprawl" is goddamn gorgeous.

I guess that’s my basic problem with SY: I don’t find their “experimental” stuff to be experimental enough, their “pretty” stuff to be pretty enough, their “songs” to be song-y enough… etc.

Even at their most commercial, though, Sonic Youth never made something as radio-focussed as "Waiting For Mary". There's a lot of abrasive guitar on the 90s records, even on the more structured songs.

I honestly don't see a major difference in songfulness vs sonic exploration between Sister/DN and Dirty, certainly not like VU with vs without Cale or even Gabriel/Hackett-era Genesis vs the Collins-led trio. They were always interested in doing songs and by Sister they were clearly doing tuneful rock anthems with the weird tunings, noisy breaks etc., none of which they abandoned in the Geffen era. (The SYR series probably contains the least song-based material they ever did, and that was from the late 90s and onwards.) I do rate Sister/DN a little higher than Goo/Dirty but more just because I find the songs more consistent. If anything, I can maybe see more of a break between the pre-Shelley material and the SST era.

I think it's basically the flipside of what Morris is saying.

Their best record is EVOL. Hands down.

This. The records to either side of it are great but it’s not close.

Maybe it's the shitty sound of the OG CD of EVOL I had as a teen but it's never been a faourite of mine - loved the terrifying noise and halloween vibes of Bad Moon and the prismatic pop of Sister much more.