Sonic Youth: Classic or Dud/S&D?

I mean yeah DN was everywhere but the politics of Goo were quite the hot topic at the time

IIRC, Enigma screwed them out of royalties on DN, which figured into the move.

Daydream Nation had huge distro but definitely wasn't considered "major label". Goo on DGC was a big deal.

I would happily drop “Swimsuit Issue,” “JC,” and “Purr” from Dirty.

It’s a good album!... but does feel like a bit of a monolith.

monoliths should be worshipped!!

My denomination has excised “Shop-ping at Max Fields! Power for you to wield!” from the liturgy.

splitters!!

Are you really hating on JC in public?

"JC" is SY Top 5, easy. Anyway, good discussion on Dirty. I fall somewhere in the middle. I bought Goo first but Dirty is when I became a fan and yet - despite my level of teenage obsession - I never managed to absorb all of Dirty, especially the second half. At this point, if needed, I would cut most of the Kim songs (mainly "Swimsuit Issue", "Orange Rolls" and perhaps "Drunken Butterfly"), which feel kinda juvenile to 40sth me. But I think these songs could have been split into two albums

Daydream Nation wasn’t on a major in the UK, Blast First put it out.

one thing that i've been puzzled by while reading this thread is that a lot of people dislike Goo, an album of theirs which i unreservedly love, but maybe this is because it's the first one i purchased? it totally blew my mind and changed my life, tbh.

i really like Dirty, but understand the feeling of it as a monolith— it's not just the songs themselves, but the production just wears me out in a way that no other SY album does. this is fine, but i find it to be one of my least-listened to "good" albums.

Dirty was recorded with Butch Vig at a studio called the Magic Shop.

iirc the new york episode of the Foo Fighters documentary series a couple of years back was filmed at Magic Shop, seemed like a funky little space

Daydream Nation wasn’t on a major in the UK, Blast First put it out.

Paul Smith, who ran Blast First, was also a big part of Enigma, I think, which might explain that. But post-Daydream is the proper Major Label era. The band were courted by lots of major labels, and even had a weird, weird meeting with Tommy Mottola, who said he had a button on his desk that would make them superstars.

also, am i the only one on here who really likes Lee and Lee's songs? i know they can border on lame and silly sometimes because of his whole beat-worship lyrical style, but it's not like Thurston is a great lyricist either.

Lee is the weird uncle of SY and unimpeachable

Lee is great, Wish Fulfillment is a jam

Lee's songs are the best!

“JC” is considered top-five SY? Weird, it sounds like filler to me.

another huge Lee fan over here but I'm still not sure "Genetic" would have worked on the album

"i actually like the lee songs the best" is a long-running SY challop (doesn't mean it isn't true)

^^

heh, i was just talking to a friend about goo yesterday (heavily influenced by it popping up on this thread recently) and found myself basically saying that. i smdh at myself

i don't like the Lee songs the best, but i did write an entire sequence of poems based on Lee's tracks, so i have a deep appreciation for them.

i will say that i think anyone who doesn't pick "Mote" as the best track on Goo is cloth-eared. maybe a tie with "Disappearer" if i'm feeling generous.

I made a nice Lee only mix. I love his songs. Not better or worse just different like a dave Davies or George Harrison.

Lee's vocals remind me of a male Grace Slick, and I mean that in a good way.

"mote" is the best song on goo and my favorite sy song

"Dirty Boots" is easily my favourite song on Goo fwiw. That classic intro, the groove, the wailing solo, the beautiful ending section, their best video. I do like "Mote" a lot, though.

I only just now noticed that the superb acoustic version of "Purr" is missing from the deluxe reissue of Dirty! wtf, that version is gorgeous:

https://www.discogs.com/Sonic-Youth-Sugar-Kane/release/2802844

Disappearer > Mote

Tunic tho....

The melodicism of “Disappearer” is really serene.

xp. i read your post up to the end but i must admit that i didn't really get that remark about dirty being a political record. concerning dirty i had always assumed the most political part of it was that it was their debut on a major. and "youth against fascism" of course. but i do not see what would be so bad about it. to my shame i must admit that i don't really think about an album being political or not. that is not a criterion for me to evaluate music. only when the political is too obvious, it usually turns me off. like certain protest singers.

something else. the best german translation of sprawl i could find referred to the open land being cluttered by new buildings, that is not exactly what you mean, is it?

Dirty loses the wise-ass attitude [of Goo] in favor of shorter songs and more direct, charged lyrics that push Sonic Youth dangerously close to punk-rock convention. A cynic might interpret this shift as Sonic Youth's attempt to woo the Lollapalooza Nation, right down to the hiring of producer Butch Vig and mixer Andy Wallace, the Nevermind tag team. Whatever the intent, the disc is shot through with urgency. Shelley's drums send the songs hurtling like a dirt racer with bad shocks, while the guitars splatter the windshield with roadkill. Righteous indignation, political and otherwise, is the primary mood: Gordon mines withering, post-feminist sarcasm on "Swimsuit Issue," while "Chapel Hill" imagines a mosh pit atop senator Jesse Helms' head and "Youth Against Fascism" gets surprisingly topical with an endorsement of Clarence Thomas accuser Anita Hill.

Daydream Nation wasn’t on a major in the UK, Blast First put it out.

thanks for the post. i love relentlessness and especially urgency in music. funny that you mention the clash. i cannot relate to their stuff at all and find it conventional, predictable and tedious. urgent is about the adjective which seems furthest away of any song i have ever heard by the clash. i like goo too but who doesn't. when washing machine came out i pretty much gave up on the band. i continued buying the albums out of some kind of respect but didn't listen to them a lot. even the syr albums. some of them still wait for my first listen.

Yah, post-Nevermind, whereas Goo was still from that mysterious time we remember as the Poppy Bush Interzone.

Speaking of "Nevermind," I'm listening right now to NYC Ghosts & Flowers... I really like this one, I think it's one of their most enjoyable albums. It's "experimental" in a way that hits my sweet spot (as opposed to the approach they take on a lot of other stuff, which doesn't connect with me so much)

funny that you mention the clash. i cannot relate to their stuff at all and find it conventional, predictable and tedious. urgent is about the adjective which seems furthest away of any song i have ever heard by the clash.

thank god i'm not the only one who feels this way about the Clash.

thought The Clash had a great sound

10 favorite SY albums, chronologically

Evol
Sister
Daydream Nation
Goo
Dirty
A Thousand Leaves
Goodbye 20th Century
NYC Ghosts & Flowers
Murray Street
Sonic Nurse

not sure of the order, maybe Sister/Daydream Nation are overall tops for me, but Evol was the first one I heard. It was the one that made me obsessed with them, and it has several amazing tracks as well as the ∞ locked groove at the end of Expressway to Yr. Skull

in retrospect I appreciate Goo and Dirty a lot more

Not so sure that the first time I saw Sonic Youth play might be the best show I ever saw. It was on the Goo tour and the opening act was Redd Kross. They played Big Star before Red Kross played and Richard Hell before Sonic Youth. It was in the Indiana room in the Union at Indiana University in Bloomington. Not that big a room at all and I saw an insane Primus and Fishbone show the next year in the same place. That SY show was the first time I saw a big circle pit open up and people stage dive at a show. They stopped the show and played Madonna's Rock the Vote video when it aired during their set. Lee Ranaldo's got a poem called "Bloomington Indiana...Autumn" that might have it's origins to the date perhaps. And I think the recording of that poem was the fist collaboration between a SY member and Jim O'Rourke.

Oh yeah, the McDonald brothers came out for the encore and sang backing vocals ala the Supremes with Kim with Thurston on bass on the show closer "My Friend Goo." The set was awesome, big part of their set was off Sister and EVOL. They opened with "Stereo Sanctity" and I remembered getting carried away from the stage in the crowd like being in the middle of the ocean. I had been to some punk rock shows before that but it was usually like 10 people beating each other up in the middle of a basement, different kind of thing.

that was right after I left town, but a ton of my friends were at that show!

funny that you mention the clash. i cannot relate to their stuff at all and find it conventional, predictable and tedious. urgent is about the adjective which seems furthest away of any song i have ever heard by the clash.

thank god i'm not the only one who feels this way about the Clash.

― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Monday, October 14, 2019 7:29 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

me too zzzzzzzz

first time I saw sonic youth was at the WFMU benefit at the Ritz. Lineup was Love Child, Gumball, Dim Stars, John Zorn's Painkiller and Sonic Youth. I was a huge Sonic Youth fan but was getting pretentious and ended up feeling like Painkiller blew them out of the water. I definitely listen to Sonic Youth more than Painkiller these days.

v enjoyable thread!

i never felt a deep connection to this band but i have loved listening to their music. and they soundtracked a lot of my formative years. 'dirty boots' was inescapable at college parties ime

i saw them first 1993 on the bizarre festival near the lorelei. they produced some great guitar noise and blew everyone else off the stage. especially new order was totally ridiculous. other bands who paled in comparison: therapy?, porno for pyros, the young gods, helmet. consolidated were quite good, actually. hole was ok too. that was about nine months before kurt's suicide.

"“JC” is considered top-five SY? Weird, it sounds like filler to me."

it's one of my favorite songs on Dirty certainly. I guess it's about Joe Cole but the lyrics have always, always been creepy and unsettling

what have I done

I got on board the SY train at the perfect time, since I had a super hip friend in 9th grade who made me a copy of Daydream Nation not long after it came out, and Goo and Dirty were both great follow-ups that rewarded anticipation. I've had different favorite Sonic Youth albums over the years, including all three of those, but none of them have really ever been among my all-time favorite albums, if that makes any sense. I just don't feel the need to listen to them that often. Similarly, I've seen the band a bunch in different settings and venue sizes, and while I don't remember any of the shows being bad, I also don't remember any of those shows being among my favorites, either. Or remember much of them at all, tbh. Kind of weird, esp. for a band that made five or six records that I do like a lot.

Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star gets less love than the other Geffen albums, and the way it uses brevity to limn gender play and sexual posing puts it over Goo and Dirty. Sonic Youth were still learning, which is to say: its post-DN predecessors required the sheen just as the band needed to get experiments in getting radio play just right.

May have mentioned this on the board elsewhere, but I got into them through Alec Foege's Confusion is Next book from 1994. My freshman year of college I was just really starting to spread my wings into new music and I randomly came across that book in an art supply store. To a kid from the middle of nowhere Illinois, it made them sound like the best band ever. A few months later DGC started their reissue project around the release of EJST&NS, so my first albums were actually the Screaming Fields comp, EJST&NS and Made in USA. Interesting entry, to say the least, but I was enthralled. Washing Machine was the first album that came out after I was a new fan, so that one will always have special place for me. I remember pissing off my roommates on a technicality on the nights we used to rotate songs and I chose "The Diamond Sea" for my turn.