when did Sonic Youth peak

i was gonna claim that intent is inaudible but i'm not sure it's true. it's easier to parse when discussing a group making a radical sonic departure or making a dumb movie or something. i don't know really know what sonic youth aren't that they're pretentiously posturing to be.. aren't they super innovative in terms of rock music? pretentions of "serious art music"-ness? sorry to pick, just braindumping

I pretty much always have that problem with the criticism "pretentious". It's one thing to criticize someone for e.g. trying and failing to write a meaningful concept album but it seems odd to me to add an additional criticism for pretending to write a meaningful concept.

this guy managed to bring out and clean up the drums a little on Sister.

Washing machine/A thousand leaves is the peak.

Our maybe self-titled/confusion is sex/kill yr idols

I dunno, definitely one of those 2 eras.

I guess I am throwing that word out there (the dreaded "pretentious" — which I don't like either, but if the shoe fits) because of the way the band presented themselves. Well, not so much the band, as much as Thurston and Kim. Like it or not, they were definitely out there to make an "ARTISTIC STATEMENT WITH GUITARS." Which, I don't know, just bugs me.

isn't that every art rock band ever

i get what you're saying though - they (Thurston & Kim) had an aloofness that was really irritating

how they positioned themselves as unflappable coolhunters and tastemakers... i only hear it in the music when they go in that wack ass beat poet shit

FFS, the muffled, burred sound of Sister is one of its greatest features for me. Right from those opening tomtom hits I feel like I have slipped into this weird little detuned cotton wool universe.
― attention vampire (MatthewK), Thursday, June 8, 2017 8:22 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this! sister's sonic palette is unique. don't touch it!

pretentious ppl make really good ass music sometimes

Oh, absolutely. Which is why I said I couldn't really vote, as all periods have instances of utterly inspired mastery.

But they did make an artistic statement with guitars. I don't see what the pretence was.

Also, guys, that's someone's private remaster of Sister on Youtube; not like it's an official release or anything. At least they're doing something more interesting than that deluxe remaster of DN.

I love "The Burning Spear" so much but it's just undisciplined Liquid Liquid. I said SYR is trash but SYR 4 is kind of a weird exception, I resented it when it came out because it seemed like some push toward "legitimizing their pop music in the eyes of [whom?] by staking a claim within the avant-garde musical community" which is disappointing in six different ways at once, but in retrospect I'm totally into both the spirit of its curation and the quality of its execution

it seemed like some push toward "legitimizing their pop music in the eyes of [whom?] by staking a claim within the avant-garde musical community"

I never felt like this was the intention fwiw.

Not that I'd know but it's just not how I ever saw it. Band members had been doing avant and improv side projects fairly consistently for a while by that point and had played with Branca around when they started releasing anything as a band. And "whom" seems like a key question there: I never imagined that the band was really that desperate to impress the very small niche of people who know who Christian Wolff and James Tenney are.

I don't feel like it was the intention either! But I did at the time.

I will try to describe it. I was told by friends that Sonic Youth had issued some statement to people calling them sell-outs for playing Lollapalooza, saying they'd take the money, build their own studio, and start their SYR series. The false equivalency of "difficult music" with "antiestablishment" has no truck with me as I don't think sonic dissonance and politics are related. The idea that a rock band would play improvised new music, or, in the case of SYR 4, perform compositions by avant-garde composers, as an effort to gain back the perceived loss of credibility from "going mainstream" just makes me feel insane about a long list of bullet-points, i.e. the ridiculousness of fan ownership, the ridiculousness of making "difficult music records" to appease that ownership, that aforementioned false equivalency, etc. etc.

In short, I perceived that the SYR series and 4 in particular was a stupid exercise at appeasing stupid fans and their stupid perceptions of what a band was supposed to do. At the time I felt this. But now I don't care. It's a good recording of some good compositions, good work team!

I mean I used to feel weird about Ciccone Youth and SY's cover of Superstar or whatever because I thought they were piss-takes. I used to think Thurston was fucking annoying for wearing his list of influences on his sleeve in interviews like he felt he needed a pedigree. I remember in the 90s the scourge of authenticity and the smug superiority. I don't care any more. Ciccone Youth rocks and I love the cover of "Superstar". Idk sorry for the long types. I don't know how to feel about this band lol

Did anyone watch that beck/thurston 120 minutes interview I posted above. Not sure if they're both assholes, only one of them (and which one), or if it's just me who is the asshole.

Like c'mon Sund4r I know they live and work in NYC and they're as avant-garde as anybody but you don't think there's something kind of suspect and smug about a second-billing festival band issuing a survey recording of avant-garde compositions? I guess it's the survey-esque nature of the thing that frustrated me xp

Also lol at that interview. "Maybe a Heino record.. or Xanadu..." "Well, I'm sure all these viewers can really relate to you on that!" idk! it was the 90s! everybody was like that, no? Beck is just not selling it particularly well

(I'm a fan of that interview!)

Supporting/encouraging Beck was the biggest aesthetic crime anyone in Sonic Youth was ever involved in.

in retrospect, this is v v true

I always felt that SY4 was more of an attempt to impress O'Rourke, or - we've now got this guy who knows a lot about avant-garde music and has improvised a lot, how do make USE of that?

And weren't they just saying, the more 'popular' things we like to do fund the less 'popular' things we like to do?

Considering the 90s were a time where Beck was into drone guitar and Olivia since before he could speak and he was so slack that his real name was the sound of a sneaker hitting the wall I think that playing into the dissonance = credibility = cool equation was probably a part of it, even if the story of them starting SYR to allay "sell-out" accusations was spurious

that Beck interview is fucking classic. SYR4 is great.. i was a super-stupid fan of sonic youth in 1999, and it fell right in line with my own trajectory outwards, discovering the larger world of music, fucking around with sounds and recording regularly. side A (of 4) sounded fully unhinged, with Kim G's vague, hushed vocals woven into the loose fabric - it was mysterious and difficult to understand. it introduced me to Christian Marclay, who made satisfying percussive sounds w/turntable, records etc. on "Burdocks" (a highlight) and throughout the four sides (the longer Cage pieces esp.) "Six for New Time" is another highlight, maybe the closest thing resembling a song (Slint-like?) on the album, and it introduced me to Pauline Oliveros. loved the variety of percussion and electronic sounds, the general sparseness of it, with meaty textures and odd juxtapositions.. but the ideas it presented were sometimes more appealing than the actual material/results. i'm glad to have been naive or ignorant of any supposed political or aesthetic intent for the album at the time, though i really dug the layout (font, graphics etc.) of the SYR series.

Considering the 90s were a time where Beck was into drone guitar and Olivia since before he could speak and he was so slack that his real name was the sound of a sneaker hitting the wall I think that playing into the dissonance = credibility = cool equation was probably a part of it, even if the story of them starting SYR to allay "sell-out" accusations was spurious

― fgti, Friday, June 9, 2017 8:13 PM (twelve minutes ago)

this post is poetry

True story (and PUA tip): I shared that interview with my current partner of 3.5 years when we were first courting.

SYR4 is great.. i was a super-stupid fan of sonic youth in 1999, and it fell right in line with my own trajectory outwards, discovering the larger world of music, fucking around with sounds and recording regularly.

This was very similar to my experience. By '99, I'd just started getting seriously into experimental composers. From my weirdly self-absorbed pov, it just seemed like a logical direction for them to go at the time, with the alternative moment in popular culture having more or less passed, esp after they had already put out a 20-minute song that was mostly a noise jam on a Geffen record.

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154 votes! nice. kinda surprised that 00s placed last

The results are too close

Lmao

this fuckin guy http://pitchfork.com/tv/22-over-under/1987-thurston-moore-rates-harry-styles-vaping-and-90s-nostalgia/

154 votes

wtf

xp i love that when they get to "90s nostalgia" thurston sounds like he's midway through a stereotypical old person speech "which was the style at the time..."

also damn i know i've thought this and probably posted this before but are those caricatures they do for the over/under's intentionally really bad and unflattering?

The "1987" in that url was really fucking with my head.

vaping blows

otm

"Sugar is just wicked at my age."

hey that too (i'm the same age as him); weight gain is a bitch for old dudes, even stringbeans like thurston

TeenAge wiot

hello twenty, fifteen!

sister-sister-sister

radical adults lick godhead style

boys go to jupiter get more stupider
girls go to mars become rockstars

one two one two one two titty

don't forget to close the door

Terror Twilight’s second attempt at actualization began at Sonic Youth’s Lower East Side studio/practice space Echo Canyon, rented out to the band at friends’ rates. The manageable budget was the main attraction but within a couple days it became apparent that the studio’s sundry idiosyncrasies were a bridge too far for Godrich. Acceptable headphone mixes were nearly impossible to achieve and the faders were upside down.

they peaked a lot when the faders were upside down, probably