Christgau's Consumer Guide Grade List: A+

that Tribe album is literally the only intersection with my own canon of 10/10s lol, difference being that I am not the soi-disant Dean of American Rock Critics

― imago, Tuesday, June 8, 2021 8:48 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lj i feel there is stuff on this list u need to check out

*likes

A Thousand Leaves, excepting two standout tracks, is second worst SY album after NYC Ghosts. I was talking about this with a friend the other day— I don't go to SY for hippie noodling or for rocking indie-pop, I go to them for aggressive, noisy art-rock. A Thousand Leaves is a dull record and no critic will ever convince me otherwise.

they're good at hippie noodling though cf. murray street. a thousand leaves i would argue proves there's no binary between hippie noodling and noisy art-rock

it opens with "contre le sexisme" ffs

That's another good example—I'm not an SY head but I've listened to all the albums, and that one's like "huh?"

i'm not a christgau defender but i think he saw certain artists very clearly, chief among them al green and sonic youth imo

(I actually like NYC Ghosts, but I wouldn't give it an A+ either... I don't think they were going for a perfect grade, anyway, with that one)

thousand leaves is such a fucking awesome record and i encourage everyone to smoke a bowl and hang with it

With the exception of "Hits of Sunshine," I hear no hippy noodling on A Thousand Leaves.

might be referring to "wildflower soul" as well idk

"Hoarfrost" is Ranaldo's best song, "Sunday" is the aggressive noisy art rock that table's looking for, and "Karen Koltrane" is spooky as fuck.

It's not an A+ but it's my favorite SY of the nineties: they stretched and it mostly worked.

When CDs were still a thing, I burned or bought copies of Love and Theft to introduce skeptics to Dylan and it almost always worked. The reaction tended to be, "Whoa! This cranky old dude is fun!" Many skeptics come to him mythos-first, which would make me a skeptic too.

upset that, AFAIK, "Karen Koltrane" has never been deployed in a horror film

Karen trips on a cloud
Sets down stars in her eyes
She's alone in a room
She's deep inside of her mind

I wish I'd hung onto the LP.

This reminds me, there was once a thread entitled something like "Would you trade all your records for those that Christgau rated A or higher?", which is a demented concept unless you are 10 years old or hate your music collection for some reason.

"Hoarfrost" is Ranaldo's best song

This is the most absolutely wrong thing you've ever written on these boards, fwiw.

And also further proof that I shouldn't listen to y'all about SY. A Thousand Leaves sucks.

I contain wrongitudes!

The mere existence of "Mote" disproves your opinion about which is Lee's best track, and also "Goo" came out in 1990, so it wins for best SY of that decade afaic.

I gave up on Sonic Youth after hating the single from Dirty. I came back for Murray Street because the Borbetomagus horns were guests on one track, but it turned out they were barely audible, so I gave up again. I keep telling myself I should deep-dive their 90s/00s catalog, but something more enticing always comes up.

Ranaldo's my least favorite of the songwriting trio precisely because he makes the most effort to make his okay lyrics legible, but I love at least a dozen of his songs.

I mean, it's not like the Grateful Dead never got noisy. There's a similar sort of loose, jammy, psychedelic quality to ATL, although it's SY doing their take on it with their vocabulary, so I get what someone means if they call it "hippie noodling". (I also get why Dead- and Television-loving Christgau likes it.) I like it but I like all their albums.

"hoarfrost" is totally my favorite ranaldo song this side of "mote"

The mere existence of "Mote" disproves your opinion about which is Lee's best track, and also "Goo" came out in 1990, so it wins for best SY of that decade afaic.

― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, June 8, 2021

"Mote" is great.

and "Hey Joni"!

But, like, I once recommended ATL to a guy who loved DMB and he thought it was unlistenably pretentious avant-garde noise.

All the albums I've listened to all the way through from the list are really good.

I give xgau a lot of shit these days but he praised Omona Wapi almost from the moment it got some kind of American release and hasn't stopped proselytizing for African music.

And he loves DeBarge.

(A note that I actually love hippie noodling, I just don't listen to SY for it).

(Or the Dead. My big problem with the Dead is that I'll be jamming the hell out and then all of a sudden one of those assholes will start trying to sing and ruin the whole experience)

lol that's how I respond to Ranaldo sometimes

That's really funny, that's more how I respond to Thurston

This list is too long for my brain, but Tabu Ley Rochereau: The Voice of Lightness [2007, Sterns Africa] is stupendously gorgeous. The two Franco collections are amazing too, but his profile is higher and I can put TVOL on any time and be enraptured

A Thousand Leaves, excepting two standout tracks, is second worst SY album after NYC Ghosts. I was talking about this with a friend the other day— I don't go to SY for hippie noodling or for rocking indie-pop, I go to them for aggressive, noisy art-rock. A Thousand Leaves is a dull record and no critic will ever convince me otherwise.

― heyy nineteen, that's john belushi (the table is the table), Tuesday, June 8, 2021 11:59 AM (thirty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I loved the SYR EPs that led up to A Thousand Leaves, and thought, "Jeez, based on these EPs, the next album's gonna be insane!" It still stands as one of the blandest and dullest (and most disappointing) records I've ever heard. I continued on with the SYR series -- which was mostly great -- but never listened to anything else they subsequently released. And whenever I asked SY fans if the new record was any good, the response was always, "...eh..."

Their '00s albums are fantastic, a couple of which are better song for song than the Geffen material.

They were releasing so much stuff at the time (xp late 90s/early 00s) that was all (imo at least) enjoyable in the way SY is enjoyable that it got a little hard to not respond that way. With more distance and perspective, I'm actually surprised by how good it all was.

can't imagine liking sonic youth and skipping murray street or sonic nurse

Not that they ever had masterful vocal chops or anything but I sort of bought the common criticism that "they can't hold a tune" until I tried to imagine what "singing in tune" would even mean in the context of SY's music.

yeah Murray Street has to be a top tenner imo

For what it's worth, as you move back into the '60s, reviews are more scattershot. (I think the CG began in '68 or '69.) The Who Sell Out is there because it was part of a big 1967 roundup he did in Rolling Stone, long after the album came out. Some things turned up as reissues, and there are lots of '60s compilations. But my guess is that Wild Honey isn't his favourite Beach Boys album, it's just one that's covered by the life of the Consumer Guide.

It looks like The Who Sell Out was tagged an A+ long before he did those RS features. It was specifically to address the 1995 reissue (though he may have been late - possibly very late - in catching up with that reissue). I think Dave Marsh had a similar re-assessment where he thought the original LP seemed half-baked by giving up on the whole concept before the end, then heard the 1995 reissue and thought the bonus material made it a complete realization. (IIRC one or two bonus recordings were actually weaved into the end of the original LP content rather than simply placed after the last track.) Wild Honey made his list of ten all-time favorite albums, albeit on a ballot that he submitted in the '70s, so he REALLY loves that album. He's also been upfront that he isn't that big on Pet Sounds, which is surprising given how much he likes Brian Wilson's 2004 edition of SMiLE (another A+).

birdisthe word: Xgau values concise albums; he acclaims compilations that are able to cover long careers in a short span of time. He'll often say review certain large box sets as "for specialists only" or "completist rather than listenable". One appeal of the Ken Burns Jazz CDs: they are still the only career-wide compilations for some of the featured artists. Also, an A plus for Slam Jams may just mean "I loved every song on this CD every time I put it on".

Yeah, there's an interview somewhere where he says he flat out hates them. There are way too many box sets in general, but he's still too prejudiced against them. Like a complete Monk Blue Note set is basically two and a half Monk albums (which may or may not come with a live recording, depending on which one you get) - it's not that different from buying the three individual CD's that cover nearly the same ground. (One of those is a Milt Jackson album that's really good, but Monk doesn't play on every track.) A lot of the best (CD) box sets aren't large or unwieldy, they're economical and sensibly programmed with the bonus of a good book.

Re: a single disc covering a whole career, that may be his taste, but I've got mixed feelings about a single-disc covering an entire career, even one that was prematurely cut short like Holiday's. In her case, cramming a few of her final recordings with her earliest ones can make the latter ones sound unfairly wretched. That was a problem on some of her early Sony comps. I get the value of a tidy single-disc, but I think they work better when they're more focused.

I love a lot of albums on this list but in my more anal moods there isn't a single one to which I'd grant full marks, save perhaps Maxinquaye.

cuz of Abbaon Fat Track?

yeah Murray Street has to be a top tenner imo

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, June 8, 2021 9:48 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is the only 2000s-era SY record (other than the weird EPs and such) that did anything for me. I HATED Sonic Nurse, listened to it a few days ago and still think it sucks.

Correct. I don't mind that one, but I'm not entirely sold it on either.

xp

Re: Who Sell Out actually I found the column, it's from Dec. 26, 1995, when the reissue came out, but I was wrong, his A+ had little or nothing to do with the bonus tracks:

https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/cg/cgv1295-95.php

THE WHO: The Who Sell Out (MCA) Back when they were as underground Stateside as Jefferson Airplane or the Mystery Trend, their charm was that they didn't take their pretensions seriously. This illusion was perpetuated beguilingly on their only great album, an exultant tribute to top 40 consumerism in which sleek, glorious singles yield gracefully to dumb, catchy ads--all paced as if the world's smartest AM jock has been stricken with laryngitis and forced to juggle 45s and carts until help arrives. There are no bad songs here, ads included--my three favorites, "I Can See for Miles" included, are "Tattoo," "Armenia City in the Sky," and "Heinz Baked Beans," none of which most AORheads ever heard. Plus 10 bonus cuts that are good for something. A PLUS

I think Dave Marsh had a similar re-assessment where he thought the original LP seemed half-baked by giving up on the whole concept before the end, then heard the 1995 reissue and thought the bonus material made it a complete realization. (IIRC one or two bonus recordings were actually weaved into the end of the original LP content rather than simply placed after the last track.)

Marsh's re-assessment was in the liner notes he wrote to the 1995 reissue, essentially saying that by adding a number of outtakes and doubling the length, it finally and fully realized the concept. The only element added to the original record's sequence was a (different) RotoSound strings jingle after "Relax."

My personal feeling has always been that Sell Out reflected the move away by listeners from hyperactive AM (side 1) to more "heavy" and reflective FM (side 2).

xps A Thousand Leaves is great pick for the SY A+. That mid-90s run of Washing Machine/SYR 1/Thousand Leaves was where they struck the perfect balance between noise rock and avant-jam band. I like the jammy stuff more though, so Murray Street/Sonic Nurse is the peak for me. Maybe "jam band" isn't the right term because most of their extended instrumental passages seem pretty composed, but it's that kind of vibe

I get the value of a tidy single-disc, but I think they work better when they're more focused.

i always chalked xgaus preference for short single disc comps over box sets as one of those quirks that makes more sense in the specific context of a guy whose chosen lifestyle involves listening to 30 different albums a day every day for 50+ years. for those of us whose listening habits dont revolve around convincing themselves & the world that theyre the ultimate human music encyclopedia, spending time digging deep into an artist you enjoy can often be a pleasure, not a needless detour.