Beautiful Jukebox: The Music of Sonic Youth (Selection 12--The Lost Album)

5/10/94

"A cruise to the altitude above the raunch"--Thurston Moore, Filter, 2006

Dude, I suppose.

As it turned out, Dirty did not make Sonic Youth superstars. Total U.S. sales fell well short of half-a-million, denying the world a picture of Thurston Moore licking a gold-record plague.

Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star seemed poised for greater things, as it debuted on Billboard at #34, and first single "Bull in the Heather" climbed the Modern Rock charts. Alas, what could have been wasn't, as Kim Gordon's pregnancy erased the possibility of touring behind the album. The potential of a gold record versus the potential in a new life, yeah, we all gotta make our sacrifices.

The band don't talk about this one too much; Kim has called it "a weird record," and in Sonic Youth's great soundline, it is. A clear reaction to its predecessors processed rawk, Jet Set concentrates on short, uncomplicated shocks of sound that show the clear influence of lo-fi bedroom auteurs like Sebadoh. It is arguably the most divisive album in their catalog; many fans who balk at 10 minute epic stretch-outs are attracted to the pocket-rock within. While fans who've come to expect sprawl and squall would sooner take a fire extinguisher up the ass than sit through the album.

Also, no Lee songs. This affects some people, and yes, it is a direct result of the Dirty disagreement.

Thurston told Melody Maker the album was "like a dialogue." The shameless spewing of bullshit to English magazines didn't stop there, as he would tell the NME that "Ultimately we're more interested in pillow talk." Finally, he claimed the album was "all about...the complexity of relationships." Yeah...isn't that any work of art ever, my dude?

The pillow talk/dialogue claim is interesting though; kinda posits Jet Set as an indie Double Fantasy, and wouldn't you know, the wife has the best songs on both albums.

In Sonic Youth's great visual history, it's inordinately odd as well. To this point, no SY album featured a lazier, uglier cover. I hate the cheesy design, and the headshots are unspectacular. (Although I guess Lee's is notable for making him look like a well-paid thumb-breaker.)

In the great Trapper Jenn history of Sonic Youth reviews, Jet Set is queerer still, in that it required two addendums.

"Winner's Blues"--Talkin' 'bout sweeeeeeet seasons on my mi-hind!" Thurston's secret Carole King fanboy emerges from the crawl space in this, the first SY tune to exclusively feature the acoustic guitar. That right there should tip you off as to the huzzah?-ness of this album. Composed at the last minute as a potential track for a DGC rarities album.

"Bull in the Heather"--This song took out a mortgage on my life immediately, but as I was only 16, the ink was invisible. Good God, to be alive, aware and appreciate when this song first came out, was fresh, was unlike anything. The band has overdone it live--or maybe I've overdone it live, hmm--and as a result it's hard for me to last through it on record. It really has a lot going for it though: the brutal scrapings of head against concrete against steel, Kim Gordon counting how many times she's done it (uh huh huh huh) and those icy harmonics. That Thurston leaves out live.

Also, how do you go from Chuck D to Kathleen Hanna as your big video cameo?

"Starfield Road"--A wind tunnel is a fine place for hyena love, but sometimes things can progress so far that they begin to regress, and that's when the phone at the Sex Crimes Unit starts ringing off the hook. Suddenly the luminous silver saucer descends at the scene and the townspeople can be heard to exclaim, "Are those cops aliens or are those aliens cops?"

This song ruins my brain, like how coconut ruins anything. I'm useless for a good minute after "Starfield Road" cuts its shameless swath through my central nervous system. Too short? Just perfect.

Thurston's contributions overall to Jet Set are pretty underwhelming, but this is about as good as anyone gets anywhere, ever. If the first 40 seconds of this video don't cause you to exclaim either inwardly or outwardly the untouchableness of it all, hey, the National are on tour.

Best song about anal sex since "Forever In Blue Jeans." There's a neat turn on words here, with the line "Sinsate your belly down." There is no such word as "sinsate"; there is, however, "sensate," meaning perceived by or pertaining to the senses. There is also "sensate focusing," a series of sexual exercises designed to switch the emphasis from the goal to the journey. I'd like to think Thurston indulged in some wordplay and intentionally misspelled the word; as it is, it suggests being satisfied by unwholesome behavior. Likely he just fucked up the spelling, but. A girl got to dream, boy.

(I almost wrote, "This song makes me pee myself, but in a good way." I had to regulate myself there. Can you envision a situation where you'd ever have to say, "Thank God I pissed my pants!")

"Skink"--Synaesthesia is the phenomenon of hearing colors. Homerphasia is the phenomenon of hearing pudding. I say put some synaesthetics in a room with some pudding, pens, and paper and play "Skink," and to a man they'll all write down "blue." This track is like sinking to ocean's bottom; but it's so suffused with heat, it's amazing the water hasn't evaporated. Exquisite admixture of Kim sensuality ("Kiss beyond/Kiss me on the lips") and goofiness ("Ooh/I love/You!"). The boys keep it smartly sparse, but one person's "That's a wise collective musical decision" is another's "Where is the extrapolation on this fuckin' album?"

I still haven't read any Carl Hiaasen though.

"Screaming Skull"--Total throwaway, but I loved it back then. Love it now, too. The guitar is dumb as a bag of hammer-heads, but I have a deep affection for "special" sounds, too.

(Not-fun fact: for the first year or so, I was confused as to who sang this song, Thurston or Kim. Snort all you want, but don't deny the breathy femininity of Thurston's delivery here.)

Listen close for Thurston under his own screaming at the end: "Oh yeah/This shit is fuckin' fucked up!"

If you haven't heard the "Rap Damage" version...you've lived, but not as well as you could have. It's Thurston in Royal Tuff Titty mode, affecting a John Wayne voice to bemoan the mainstream artists "suckin' on the big D" of the corpogres (any portmanteau in a storm!). For intentional hilarity in a Sonic Youth song, it's unbeatable.

"Self-Obsessed and Sexxee"--The first of two Thurston-sang tracks that address admirable issues in vague, non-committal ways. This is a paean to riot grrrls. Not shocking, as Kim and Thurston were all chummy with Bikini Kill, and Kim basically handed the template for those women to run with anyway.

"Magic marker on your belly button/All right." Is that supportive, or sarcastic, or do you even know anymore, man? You think when the great story of feminism is told, Kathleen Hanna with the word "RAPE" scrawled across her bare tummy will rate mention alongside the Seneca Convention, the Pill, or Roe vs. Wade? Do you think "Eat meat/Hate blacks/Beat your fuckin' wife/It's all the same thing!" deserves a place alongside The Second Sex as literature that provides insight into the female condition?

The song is saved only by Thurston's chanting of the utterly inane "Party party party/Party all the time." Puts me in mind of Eddie Murphy's 80s smash "Party All the Time," which for all the retroactive shit it gets by people who overanalyze and suck the ecstasy out of orgasms, is a great fucking song, and a song that kicks "Self-Obsessed and Sexxee" in the goddamn sternum.

(The only period of my life I reminisce on more than that time I was discovering Sonic Youth is the 80s. MTV played videos! McDonalds introduced the Value Meal (which was the size of what a regular order is now)! I vividly remember when those worlds collided, when my sister got herself, her boyfriend, me and our mom some Value Meals and we all huddled in front of the TV to watch the world premiere of the "Purple Rain" video. I think my mom even likened it to listening rapt to the Fireside Chats. That's my childhood! Vivid purple!

"Bone"--Leaves the house for work dripping invincibility. SS is patrollin' the beat, Kim G. is sliding around the circumference of the neighborhood, and those two incorrigible fellas are armed and vowing to make beehives humble. Then, jeez, the exhibitionist guy runs up to the schoolyard and...peters out.

Notable for a tri-guitar non-attack and hey am I the only one who thinks Kim Gordon is sounding like Kim Deal here?

"Androgynous Mind"--I like when artists aren't afraid to show the more solicitous side of themselves. They're not just creative; they're concerned.

The greatest intentions do not always make for the greatest art. This is obvious. I still consider "We Are the World," and I cannot figure how Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones could conspire to make something that breathtakingly awful.

Same here. Sonic Youth dealing with homophobia? That should be a great song.

It's not.

"God is gay/And you were right." Yeah, T-bone? What are you saying there? I dunno, it's like Thurston heard "All Apologies" and just had to conjure up his own homo-friendly soundbite?

This song tears at me; Thurston claimed in an interview that the lyrics are meant to imitate the mind state of a gay person subjected to slurs and threats, and that's an incredible lift-off point for any work of art, but as Thurston isn't a gay person, and thus never directly in the line of fire of said epithets, how could he be personally expected to articulate the suffering, doubt and rage that a victim of social violence has to endure? First-rate art is usually first-hand experience. If he was looking to expose his empathetic heart, an instrumental would been better. The band absolutely rips during the "Hey hey it's okay" screech sequence; three minutes of that, careening to and from variations, would have made for a stirring act of solidarity. Instead, we have Thurston Moore's well-meaning if ill-fit for the task pen.

"Quest For the Cup"--A schlumpy start gives way to white-gal bluesy strut. Dedicated to writer Lisa Crystal Carver. She's a round-trip that lost the ticket back home, that one. I still have, in one of my many boxes o' readables, a Details from 1996 that features an article on Carver. In it, she announces her desire to make a love connection: "He's got to be smart but have emotional problems. He's a bit misogynistic; he doesn't have to respect other women, just me."

Just like I misheard "Reggie White" in "The Wonder," I almost swore Kim was saying "Hakeem Olajuwon" here. (It's actually "feel like an alarm clock.") Woulda made sense, as Kim was in the throes of her Knicks obsession then.

"Feel just like a donut." Round, and with a gaping hole in the middle. I feel ya.

"Waist"--First off...Snoopy! Maybe if I write about having a dream wherein me, Yoshimi and Snoopy have a pizza and ice cream cake/dance party in his doghouse, I'll actually have the dream. It is my dream to one day have that dream.

Thurston wakes up and brushes the crumbs out of his bangs here, and he sounds better on this song than elsewhere on the whole album, like he's simultaneously glad and pissed to be roused from his couch-bound slumber.

Spin had Jet Set as its lead review one month; lamentably I no longer have that issue, and remember little about it other than it was how I found out Kim was expecting a baby, it was written by Mike Rubin, and he made a deal about the "guitar solo" in "Waist." So I got the CD and I'm all, "That's a guitar solo?" I listen to it nowanights, and I'm all, "That is not a guitar solo." It's spaz noodling, is all that is. That'll happen from time to time.

(Stupid Spin! It was as stuffed sick with shitsacks then as now, but the music they reviewed was better, so it was worth buying, 'cause remember this is pre-Internet explosion and you couldn't make an instant music expert, just add Google! I mean, Charles Aaron was like Christgau for architecture majors, but I'd rather read someones thesaurus-fucking opinion of the Breeders than similarly over-serious thoughts on Radiohead.)

"Doctor's Orders"--Tale of an aging housewife devoted to insidious half-life after many fulfilling years spent raising children and vacuuming the same goddamn rooms over and over.

There exists a rough version of this (and most of the rest of the album) on the Net; the main difference between it and this finished product is Kim tunelessly shouting the chorus. The lullaby-delivery on the album is so much better. And oh my sweet Jebus, when the guitars kick in at the "Mother came home today" part. I could listen to that till my ears turn vivid purple! and fall off.

(Search for the "T-vox version." Exact same tune, but Opie tosses off some lecherous snarf over it.)

"Tokyo Eye"--Patrick is one of the biggest Jet Set fans I know. For what it was, and for what it could have been. Still, he had limits.

"Why don't you like 'Tokyo Eye'?"

"It's okay when Thurston's not...."

"Singing?"

"No, I mean yeah, but that's not singing."

"That whiny...."

"Yeah, that whiny, straining voice. It just bugs me."

"But musically. C'mon. Toy monkey cymbals and all. Crash-crash. And when they kick it up a gear. Knock over all the jam 'n jelly jars. Shit yeah."

"Right, but you have to get through Thurston first."

"Worth it though."

"True, true."

"In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader"--I thought this song was hilarious in '94. It was literally the only song that my dear pal Angela actually liked on the whole record and along with "Into the Groove(y)," the only SY song she liked at all. It had to be how goofy it is. Smoke some weed, laugh your skull soft at some cartoons, quality time.

In retrospect...how dire was that particular session? Jerk-ass riff wandering aimlessly, relentlessly dumb lyrics that climax in an exaltation to the Trix rabbit.

Buried in the Sonic vaults is a Goo-era hip hop remix of an SY song by Daddy-O of Stetsasonic (it may be "Kool Thing," I can't remember). Steve Shelley claims it is too horrifying to ever see the light of day; I say, it can't be much fucking worse than "Bourgeois Reader." And they put this on an album! They played this live multiple times! Meanwhile "Disappearer" got played, what, once?!

"Sweet Shine"--Perfect choice to end the album, as Kim's owned the entire ragged ride anyway.

Thurston told Melody Maker that "Sweet Shine" was "very personal to Kim." I have my own theory on it, which I articulated as best I could when I did my top 30 SY songs list.

"Cowboys are languishin'/Little girls are bees/Is it really a green stagecoach/Crawlin' up to me?"

Lines so memorable Thurston quoted them at the beginning of his Alabama Wildman book; in response to an interviewers query, he would claim to have chosen them for their quintessential Kim-ness. I think they made an impression worth regurgitating for a different reason. The cowboys are the boys in the band, in moments of relaxation, say pre- or post-concert. The buzzing girls are as close as any band on SY's level can get to "groupies". The green stagecoach--genius fucking use of Wild West imagery throughout; note also the "Marlboro belt buckle baby" line in the first verse--is jealousy, visiting the wife of the guitar hero.

And there's more, all suppositions and guesses in a fool's game. We all have our explanations to fill such open space, usually designed to endear the song to us. That was mine.

I'm almost embarrassed to type out stuff like that, but that's how my mind works.

The guitar melodies are immaculate, and Kim's performance is even better than that. "Sweet Shine" glimmers as a rare peek into the deeper recesses of Kim's mind and memory. With her chilly, oft-imperious demeanor, Kim is the most impenetrable lyricist in the band, so this track's like a bittersweet treat. The true definition of nostalgia--the pain of it--is evident in her voice.

Hidden Track--Outtake from the Japanese dub of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, specifically the Flying Ace fight sequence. Chinese people in Japan love Sonic Youth! Urusai-wane!




Patrick ponders some beautiful shit sometimes, he does.

"I love Jet Set. You know this. But it's mainly for Kim's songs. Like her songs, all together, are four stars. Thurston...three stars."

"And Lee, no stars. Oh shit! Maybe that's where that part of the title comes from!"

Once I was finished amusing myself (and that can take an hour or so), Patrick got to his point.

During the baby-inspired hiatus, Thurston Moore wrote and recorded his first solo album, Psychic Hearts. It's a masterpiece of pop sensibility, punk severity, and holy shit extrapolation. He also acquits himself lyrically. The title track is a mature message of strength and intelligence to a mentally ill teen girl struggling to maintain her identity. Where was this heart on Jet Set? And aside from "Starfield Road," where were the great Thurston songs?

Wouldn't Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star have been a much better, more enjoyable record if Thurston's lesser contributions were nixed and replaced with the greater tracks on his solo album?

(This is what captivates Patrick and me. This is our crystal meth.)

Thurston has 8 songs on Jet Set. Keep "Starfield Road," because it clearly licks godhead radical style.

"Winner's Blues" can be replaced with "Cherry's Blues." Both are acoustic, both end in the same word.

The rest can be switched out for:

"Ono Soul"
"Patti Smith Math Scratch"
"Psychic Hearts"
"Tranquilizer"
"Cindy (Rotten Tanx)" (anyone doubting a Sonic Youth treatment of this song would kill, refer to "Poet in the Pit" off the Dirty reissue.)
And if you absolutely must axe "Screaming Skull"...replace it with "Female Cop."

The possibilities...



There is a rumor that for the first half of the record you can faintly hear the corresponding songs from Sister ("Schizophrenia" under "Winner's Blues," etc.) This is not a rumor. It is fact, and it's worth damaging your ears turning up the volume supra-loud to hear "Catholic Block" at the end of "Bull in the Heather" and then all of a sudden SCREEEEEEEEOONKKKKKKKKQQQQQ.

The real question was always how? And the realer question: why?

After years of Internet query, a member of the band actually addressed the issue. Steve is like the man and shit. He cleared up that "how" like a motherfucker. Although the why is still out there....

Beautiful Jukebox: The Music of Sonic Youth (Selection 11--A Screeching Mud Puddle)

7/21/92 (what is it with works of art released on 7/21 that alter my beast for the better?)

"The music stopped in the nineties. People just added a little distortion, a little imitation Sonic Youth, and called it alternative."--Tracii Guns, Rolling Stone, 12/27/07

1992 was the year after Nirvana-mania hit. At the time, it wasn't annoying. How could it have been? I was barely 15 years old. However was I to know that two years later Cobain would off himself, permitting Courtney Love to metastasize, and assuring his ascension to the ranks of the prematurely deceased artists whose creations take on a kind of mega-significance that they never would have had said artists lived to 70. I had no inkling that 45% of all Spin mag issues post-April '94 would feature Cobain on the cover. All I had really was my burgeoning obsession with the band that made that whole monstrosity of ambivalence possible.

1992 was the year Sonic Youth would cash in, break out, get a gold record. Years of providing examples in and out of the recording studio, of nurturing and cultivating like-minded artists, of tirelessly championing the worthy...it would finally pay off. In aid of making salable the band that featured two veterans of Glenn Branca's guitar army, producer Butch Vig and engineer Andy Wallace (aka "the Nevermind team") were brought on to man the boards. It also didn't hurt that the influence of Nirvana and Mudhoney meant Sonic Youth were writing catchier, more melodic songs and performing them with a near-tangible recklessness.

1992 was the year I played Dirty every day of the year from July 21 on.

1992 was the year everyone realized Sonic Youth were never gonna "make it big."

1992 was the year my brain broke. And SY's tough love approach--"you should reassemble it yourself"--meant that no other band would ever have my heart, soul and mind like they would.

"100%"--The fuckin' righteous enormity of Sonic Youth has never been harnessed so tight. Not just with this song, but this whole album. A few of the songs took inspiration, however, from decidedly unrighteous events.

The murder in 1991 of beloved underground roadie/actor Joe Cole devastated many, including Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore. (Thurston's recollection of finding out that Cole had died, as told in the Henry Rollins bio Turned On, is heartbreaking.) Each would be moved to write a song in Cole's honor, and Dirty begins with Thurston's tribute.

"100%" starts off squealing and crackling, like a pig being fried alive. Then the riff drops on your bones. Thurston's lyrics immortalize "a blast in the underworld" using references indecipherable by outsiders and graphic turns of phrase.

(In 2002, there was a hilarious brouhaha on the SY.com forum over one of the lines to "100%." A poster lost to the Ethernet wondered if Thurston was saying "Ease off the chick is mine" or...not that. Responses came steadily, suggesting that the true lyric was "He's off to check his mind," "His alter chick is mine" and it got increasingly ridiculous until finally SY insider Chris "The Canadian" Lawrence had to step in and clear it up via email query. Turns out Opie Moore was saying, "The zoftig chick is mine." Then everyone wondered what the hell "zoftig" meant. (It's a nice way of noting someone is fat. I know all about them euphemisms.)

"Swimsuit Issue"--You know what's almost as good a look as Rodarte Kim? Feminist Kim. A nameless Geffen exec fond of inviting women into his office to check out and possibly rate his beat-off technique is immortalized here. Bonus points for using the word "field." Bonus ten points for utilizing the tri-guitar attack. Fools don't know about Kim G's style.

Yeah, "whammy" is a goofy slang term for "penis," but it's still leagues better than "jelly roll." Also it makes me think of "Whammy Kiss" by the B-52s. ("WHEN I GET HOME!" Fred Schneider always makes sex sound like something you gotta answer for.)

The verses are just candy coating till the bubble gum at the end, when Kim drops her voice a fair octave and spreads out all sultry as she recites a list of supermodels. I always wondered what Kim's ultimate point was here. That the culture of beauty promotes sexual harassment?

"Theresa's Sound-World"--My favorite back then, my favorite right now. Says a lot either for the timelessness of the tune or my stasis as a listener. Heavy on light, this is the capo di tutti capo of Dirty. Imagine that the fizzy lifting drinks led to Charlie and Grandpa Joe getting chopped to shreds. Butch Vig called this "a performance from another dimension," and not one syllable is hyperbole. My Bloody Valentine provide earplugs at certain gigs because they play at an insane volume to overcompensate for a lack of stage presence. If Sonic Youth ever put this 'un back on their set lists, it would behoove them to hand out adult diapers.

"Drunken Butterfly"--Ya head. In a vice. Oh well, shoulda paid up, I got no sympathy. These verses got Heart, the chorus opens Doors. Cracker-crisp but never crumbles.

When you have Steve Shelley on the throne, why would you ever feel compelled to add drum samples to the mix? It would be like saying, "You know what would make Anthony Bourdain's show even better? If he interacted with that douche from Diners Drive-Ins and Dives! 'Tony, this lobster ravioli is money!'"

"Shoot"--The Japanese call it "DV." In America, it's a man's right to put his woman in her place, or something. The bass line is almost as evil. (Not all female bassists have to be Tina Weymouth, you know.) I have a deep history with violence against women; it's not just something I decided to be outraged by, and sought stories from other women to live vicariously through. I'd go deeper into it if I felt it was your business.

Anyway, the asshole gets shot. Good one on him.

"Wish Fulfillment"--The super-produced sheen of Dirty fits almost all the songs. This is the odd one out.

'Course, I ain't really realize truly why at the time. From the beginning I never liked it so much, it kinda struck me cornball popcheese. Meanwhile everyone and their stepmom holds it up as yet more proof of Lee's heart-rending poetic brilliance. Meanwhile I'm hungry. I just didn't get it.

Then I got hold of a recording of a Lee solo gig in Hartford, CT, circa 1996. He does "Wish Fulfillment" solo, just him and an acoustic guitar, and I forgot to breathe or blink the first time I heard it. Everyone else's testimonials suddenly made sense. Lee's words are desolate, desperate, disappointed, angry, hopeful, and sympathetic, and stripped free of the Vig/Wallace "magic," they leave a ring around the heart.

That's enough. Then you consider the inspiration for the song.

Per Lee, it refers to a "semi-famous artist friend." This could refer to many people, when you consider a jack-o-lotsa-trades like Mr. Ranaldo surely has stockpiled a tidy number of semi-famous artists friends by this point. It is tempting as a thousand virgins, though, to think that it's his bandmates that are the subjects of "Wish Fulfillment"; namely, the married ones.

I read the lyrics and I think of record company influence, the promise of something greater, of prominence, of money, of security, of the fact that while he's got likely as pure a heart as anyone who ever strapped a guitar onto their bodies, and I mean a soul so beyond reproach that even Courtney friggin' Love devoted space in her Lollapalooza diaries to how watching him play a guitar is a religious experience, face it: Thurston Moore always wanted to be a rock star. Kurt Cobain did too; I don't see what the point is in denying it. How hard is it to imagine Lee getting irritated with his bandmate talking about numbers and points and placement and product? ("It might be simple, it might be true/I might be overwhelmed by you.")

"I see you shaking in the light reading the headline news/The others they're not quite so bright/You want them to choose you/I could almost see your face tonight/Singing simple rhythm and blues." So I'm the only one who can see Kim and/or Thurston here? No way.

It is of course just as likely to be someone else. I hope we never find out. Because if the song itself wasn't intriguing enough, the controversy behind it being the only Lee-sung track on Dirty can make you break out the decoder ring.

That's for later.

"Sugar Kane"--Marilyn Monroe? Eh. I'd never fuck her. Too blonde! Also, dead.

This is Exhibit A why Dirty didn't bust out. Catchy as an ice cream truck making itself known, Thurston not being too esoteric, and using a "k" where normally a "c" would be. Fukcin' kool. But then they go and drag it out, drop it out, Sonic Youth cannot resist the allure of the squall.

("Kiss me like a frog/And turn me into flame." Beats a prince any day.)

"Orange Rolls, Angel's Spit"--My eyes once scanned the screen to see a fan referring to their "inexplicable affection" for this song. The hell? That sounds crazy explicable to me. How do you not dig this sepia-toned siesta of squeal? This ass-scouring separates the adults from the kiddies. It just got real up in Sesame Street. Count this, ya piece of shit. Today's program was brought to you by the letter Kiss my New York ass! Oh, irascible youth! Kim grits her teeth and so do I.

Kim did a phoner back in 1992 for Scene mag and described "Orange Rolls" thusly: "That was just about drugs...and...drug craziness." Why snort coke and get fucked in the ass when audio facsimiles exist? I'm sayin'.

"Youth Against Fascism"--Queasy alien pulse transmitted through what Edina Monsoon would obliviously call a "bleep machine," this is as bearably corny as a political song can get. ("His shit is outta luck"? Is it, Thurston? Is it really?) Notorious for featuring a cameo on guit-biscuit by DIY bottle washer Ian Mackaye, and hilarious for Mackaye not being able to identify his playing on the final version. This song kinda makes me sad, having lived through eight years of Bush II: Redneck Boogaloo.

I remember watching Tabitha Soren interview George Bush for MTV. It took place on the rear of a moving train. She didn't even make an attempt to throw him off. It totally would have been worth the instant death from a snipers bullet.

"Nic Fit"--Ian's brother Alex wrote this song as a member of the Untouchables. It's a raucous anti-smoking anthem so the ironing is cheesecake-delicious here. Thurston didn't want this put on the album proper (he hated his delivery, which is actually my favorite thing about the song) but Butch Vig really pushed for it. A key figure in the "Lee songs controversy."

"On the Strip"--It wasn't until David Browne's seminal bio Goodbye 20th Century that the inspiration for this song became common knowledge: Courtney Love. Her again?! I have typed that name way too much this review.

"Close your eyes and pretend/You're not at all like then."

"She's so hungry for a bite/Forgetting her friends fork and knife."

Wow, Kim nailed her. (One of millions.) It's true now as then. It's funny, when the protagonist of "On the Strip" was just some anonymous hypersexed waif I felt a deep sympathy for her and hoped that the coda to her sordid tale was not a sad one. Then later, after finding out her real-life inspiration I felt the song was just a too-good nod towards a rancid compilation of flesh, bone and fluid.

It's all about the disillusionment, man, in a way. The Nevermind cover baby grew up to be a Blink-182 fan, so what was it anyway?

"Chapel Hill"--Yet again a real-life homicide is the subject for a song. "Chapel Hill" peripherally deals with the murder of North Carolina independent bookseller Rob Sheldon, throwing well-deserved cups of egg nog at the then-alive and hating Senator Jesse Helms (imagining a scenario wherein the decrepit bastard is decimated in a pit at the Cats Cradle). The music is less vitriolic at first; the beginning is downright idyllic, and the arpeggiated chrous almost made me stop the CD to make sure poltergeists hadn't switched it on me.

"JC"--Kim's song for Joe Cole. Thurston's lyrics were very dude a dude remembrances of and transmissions to a lost buddy, but his wife's imagery is distinctly female, flying by in a haze of leafy orange and brown, conjuring up lustrous eyes set in a face that will one day be gone to history.

It may sound otherwise to other ears, but the guitars are not raging against the premature death of light. I can see the luminescence fade with each scrape of plastic on metal. This is grievous resignation. This is goodbye to one of the good ones...for good. Kim has shed enough tears over this and now it's our turn. (No dramatics; "JC" is one of three Sonic Youth songs that brought me to tears.)

"Purr"--This song is stroft. It's almost disorienting, going from the soul-stirring "JC" to Thurston's big ol' "WAAAAAAAAAAAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" This is good dumb fun, an ode to I think you know with some unusually nimble guit-works happening. Plenty fuckin' rockin'.

"Creme Brulee"--The circumstances of this songs recording sound more than a bit like those times I travel out to Cali to hang with my peculiar pack of friends. Kim and Steve messing around with the actual words and melody, Thurston in the corner treating his amp like he just landed on Earth and has no idea what this thing does, and Lee off hanging back, capturing it all for history. You've probably never hung with me and my Cali pals, but um, spoiler alert: I'm Lee in this scenario.

All anybody seems to remember about this song is "Last night I dreamt I kissed Neil Young/If I was a boy I guess it would be fun." Oh shit, Kim G. with the zinger. Is there or has there ever been a solid homosexual fanbase for the man actually born Neil Young? Do they fantasize about kissing his rugged Canuck face while whispering about how, hey, he should do a comic book series for all his albums!?

You know what I really dig though? "Scrape scrape scrapin' melted cheese." Shit yes. Nachos. In the summertime.




No Sonic Youth album had as much discarded material worthy of final inclusion as Dirty. The original vinyl included "Stalker" and the singles featured b-sides that were killing every other bands best songs. No Sonic Youth b-side, ever, has incited the shitstorm that "Genetic" has, though.

Until the Browne book cleared it up, it was legend among the SY fanbase that Lee wanted both "Wish Fulfillment" and "Genetic" on the album, but was vetoed by Thurston and Kim, leading to Lee threatening to quit the band. The first two parts of that statement are true, but all parties involved who will go on record claim it never got that serious. Lee has gone on to say that "Genetic" may not have registered as instantly with Kim and Thurston and wasn't one of their songs to begin with, so they weren't very vested in pulling for it. Thurston for his part has wondered aloud if Lee doesn't take band decisions that don't work out in his favor a bit too personally.

Kim and Steve have never publicly said a word about it. Bless 'em.

Should "Genetic" have made the final cut? Yes. It's as radio-friendly a track as SY ever could make and still sound true to the SY spirit, and Lee sacrifices none of his introspective soul (this is arguably his most personal song, written as he was dealing with a divorce from his first wife). Also, it and "Rain King" show that the man has a way with saying the word "kid." But what do you take off?

The "resequence Dirty" challenge is one of my favorite games to play with other SY nerds (right up there with "Let's have a five minute conversation using nothing but quotes from The Year Punk Broke). The band themselves even indulged with the vinyl deluxe reissue which featured 19 songs over 4 slabs like so:

100%
Swimsuit Issue
Theresa's Sound World
Drunken Butterfly
Genetic
Shoot
Wish Fulfillment
Sugar Kane
Orange Rolls Angel's Spit
Youth Against Fascism
Nic Fit
On the Strip
Chapel Hill
The Destroyed Room
Stalker
JC
Hendrix Necro
Purr
Creme Brulee

For the sake of the CD, 19 songs is ridiculous. This isn't a goddamn hip hop mixtape. Let's keep it at 15, just like the original. Cut "Nic Fit" (inconsequential), "Wish Fulfillment" (doesn't hold up to scrutiny), "The Destroyed Room" (simply would not fit) and "Stalker" (I would rather have a stalker than listen to that goddamn song again). Move the awesome, overlooked "Hendrix Necro" (one of Kim's greatest vocal turns ever, seriously; I wanna be her dogcatcher) to after "Youth Against Fascism" and Boog Powell surprise! A perfect Dirty.

Beautiful Jukebox: The Music of Sonic Youth (Selection 10--Days When They Use Ta)

June 1990

It was a big deal when Sonic Youth did a u-turn and exited onto the main road. They sold out. They comprised their ideals, which were the ideals of the entire indie rock underground scene. They would inevitably dilute their sound for the sake of wider appeal. They sucked the corporate cock in general, and David Geffen's in particular, or at least they were on the waiting list.

Except not really.

It was a great time to be 12 years old, discover Sonic Youth's music, and be ignorant of all the drama.

"Dirty Boots"--Dishonesty can sound delightful, but sometimes songs don't lie. The opening track of the rest of Sonic Youth's life does have an undeniable whiff of Pigpen about it, a loopy dust cloud kicking up around maracas and oddly-configured guit-fiddles. The lyrics are mainly Thurston Moore borrowing hippie dribble to evoke the rugged romance of the touring band. That's all well and wanted dead or alive, but "jelly roll" was and forever is the worst slang term for penis ever dreamed.

"Tunic"--I don't like ironic enjoyment. I know someone who watches TMZ to feel superior. There but for the grace of God goes you being asked if you and David Spade are more than friends as you're trying to get a limo out of LAX, I say.

SY's fondness for the saccharine pop of the Carpenters never struck me as disingenuous simply because I find it easy to believe as a fan of that genre. As much as Richard tried to superimpose himself on their songs as some sort of multitrack genius (oh do not start me up on the backing vocals during the chorus of "Yesterday Once More," the second occurrence of it I mean. The first time is pure magic) his sister Karen was blessed with an effortlessly ethereal voice that stared down studio tricks and glasses of warm milk. She was also cursed with a body and mind twisted into a Gordian knot by anorexia nervosa, a disorder that not many acknowledged, much less comprehended, in 1983, the year her heart finally gave up.

"Tunic" is a soulful tribute, stuck together with Galaxy Glue, juxtaposing the helplessness of the body with the hopefulness of the spirit. Karen herself may or may not have dug it, but I guarantee she woulda said, "The drummer is really good."

"Mary Christ"--Thurston's Cat-hole lick guilt flaring up again. I can't name too many of that religion who never fantasized about making the Pope eat their pussy, or face-fucking Mary.

"Kool Thing"--The coolest thing (ha, shit!) about "Mary Christ" is how the riff to "Kool Thing" is kinda buried there at the end. It's one of those riffs Thurston had in his backpack for awhile, as you can hear him bust it out between songs on the 1987 speed-boot Hold That Tiger. It's also as undeniable as In and Out Burger, and goes just as good with a bottle of Heineken.

I don't get overprotective or overly defensive with Sonic Youth, although I could forgive someone who only knows me through my writing thinking otherwise. I do get a little bodyguard-ish with this song, though. It's the first Sonic song I ever heard, after all, via DC 101.

Sonic Youth on non-college radio. I want y'all to wrap ya heads around that, like caramel slowly spun around a chocolate bar, like I saw on some commercial. Sonic Youth amid all the other mainstream rock on the airwaves.

Then I saw the video on MTV. Again, caramel around chocolate. If you aren't reading this sitting down, or laying down, you probably by now wish you were. On second thought, that's real fuckin' weird if you're like standing right now reading a blog. You must be real obsessive about blood clots.

I wasn't the only one in my home whose attention was captured; my brother (and senior by eleven years) also dug on "Kool Thing." Course, he was always a sucker for the Golem riff. He was also a sex-obsessed party-dude metalhead, making him about as unique as a raindrop. He also wasn't a very malleable type cat, a trait I admire way less nowadays. His tastes in music, his life philosophy, his hopes for the future, none of that was changed by hearing "Kool Thing" or buying Goo. It went alongside his Metallica, Ministry, Beastie Boys and Judas Priest CDs until he finally gave into my daily pleas to borrow it.

He didn't get that CD back.

It wasn't just the music, although I guess it isn't very pure to say that. Well I'm not into purity so much as honesty with my appreciation of any art. Yes my young mind was enraptured by the guitar sounds, so different from the songs I heard on MTV or on the radio or via my brothers extensive collection of music. It was also the aforementioned video, kinetic imagery and intermittent colors, and Kim Gordon. Madonna was still ruling shit back then, and in all of her videos you could see that she was in thrall with the general idea of sexuality. Kim was coming across as a woman aware of and projecting outwards her own sexuality. It was processed--all sexuality is--but Madonna was reeking of chemicals. Kim was flavorful: intimidating, but not imperious; sensuous but not submissive (at least not to the viewer); ajar, not open.

It's funny then to realize that the subject of "Kool Thing" is a younger, more naive Kim, one who idealized rapper LL Cool J and then rapidly realized after talking with him that he was a Bon Jovi-digging materialist. (He made Radio, though, so you can't rip the guy too much.) One MC whose gait matched his yak was Chuck D, and SY convinced their studio mate to drop some silliness in the middle of "Kool Thing." (Being Chuck D, however, it turned out being some authoritarian-sounding silliness.) The back 'n forth between Kim and Chuck produced the amazing "fear of a female planet," a twist on Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet, released the same year as Goo. (The PE crew planned on reciprocating the artistic generosity by having Kim provide vox to "Revolutionary Generation," but the schedules could never synchronize, and the world was denied a member of Sonic Youth appearing on one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time.)

Wow, I am saying a lot of things. Word up Pam Beesly.

"Mote"--Lee's one shot at glory this go-round, 'cause apparently Geffen was like "poet dude with three songs is overkill, regulate that, married couple."

Lee takes inspiration from Sylvia Plath's poem "The Eye-Mote" and proves himself worthy as a rock lyricist can of one of the true masters of textual imagery. The music is evocative of Plath, a buzzing note-bed for a stealthy melody line to kick restless legs in. What else? J Mascis and Lee sound great together, too.

That's it, right?

No.

The last four minutes is like watching a slo-mo video of someone sitting on the bathroom floor, face pale and sweaty, twitching from the superhuman effort not to vomit. Eventually they fail, and hike themselves up on bended knees to decorate the toilet. Then they plop back down on their butt, and reach a hand off camera, drawing back to reveal the same bottle of Scotch that took them over the edge. They're not gonna drink more of it are they? Oh yeah. Hearty chug, in fact. Fucking drastic.

"My Friend Goo"--Kim and Thurston switch instruments for this one. I have an issue of Musician featuring SY 'round the time of Goo, and I do not get why Thurston used this song as a blatant example of Kim's improved musicianship on bass. Because she's not fucking playing bass on this song. It's a flat-out lie, and it's not the usual fun, flip bullshit Thurston offers up in Q and A's. It's just misleading and dishonest. He should have been talking up Kim's endlessly fresh approach to six strings. (I'll be doing that later on in this series.)

This song is so goddamn corny. Off and on the cob. It's kind of amazing how childish an obvious intellectual mind can be. But J Mascis pops up yet again, and his deadpan contribution is classic.

(It's so good I didn't see the video for this song at age twelve, or I woulda been turned off guys completely, instead of just halfway like I am now.)

"Disappearer"--I was gonna say this was Thurston's last great lyrical display, but then I tried to contradict myself and got real confuzzled. It's hot, dry, I'm moving in a week, my brain is just scrambled. Lucky me, "Disappearer" scrapes the yellow mess off the plate and replaces it with sunny side variety. Now I get to breathe and feel the freedom of the expansion. Kim told Melody Maker that Goo's songs were "like little gumballs," so Don Fleming stops by to blend in.

The first review of any SY anything my eyes saw was Tom Verlaine's guest write-up of Goo in Spin, and he was especially enamored of the lyrics to this song. (And no, I didn't know who Tom Verlaine was, and what he meant to Sonic Youth. I was exposed to a shit-ton of music as a kid thanks to my thousand siblings, but it was pretty much the same music everybody knew anyway. I wasn't like Jim O'Rourke in the womb kicking at his mom's stomach whenever she stood near some Van Dyke Parks in the record store.)

"Disappearer" is for sure a road ode, but while the lyrics suggest astral travel, I always feel on terra firma when I listen to it. I can see deep blue, some pink, crisscrossing, dissolving, leaving trails. Everything accelerates: music, vehicle, heartbeat.

"Mildred Pierce"--Rampaging near-instrumental, aaaand one of the first alleged songs SY ever dreamed up. I want Thurston's final scream as a ringtone. And so do you, now that I suggested it, ya copycat.

"Cinderella's Big Score"--Thurston told a journo that this was "a real personal song for Kim," and the line "You'd rather have a dollar than a hug from your sis," considered alongside the first image in the video for the song tells the rest of the story.

Thurston's behind the bridge style on this song is another of those innovations that was jacked quiet as kept from SY.

The whole feel of "CBS" is deliriously seasick, like the eggs from "Disappearer" didn't set right. Prob'ly I should not-a drank the Yoo Hoo with them. Oh well. This song rules and I would do it again.

"Scooter and Jinx"--Richard Kern implicated in amp murder. Sex in the courtroom expected. Stenographer with a taste for the lurid wanted.

"Titanium Expose"--Like the band took every classic rock riff it used to discard in the old days as counter to the movement and made a four-course piecemeal. Proof that SY not only are able to do the accessible and familiar, but they can excel at it as well. Can't you just see Joe Satriani , top down on his Camaro, some hot babe's hand on his right thigh, blaring this into the phony California air?

Thurston claimed in an interview that the songs subject matter (the routine that makes connubial bliss) informed the title, that married love could be strong as titanium. Then in another interview, he said that the title was actually based on something he misheard out of J Mascis' mouth. The last one? The true one.

The lyrics are very honorable to the quiet power of a sweet union, though. The musical and lyrical synergy of

I been waiting for you
To smile all the pretty freezing
Winter time comes summer
You are why it's happenin'

is enough to make me yearn for true love, the kind that pulses in the blood.

Goo gets better with age. The record that allegedly made Kim cry from its misrepresentation of Sonic Youth's sound now stands as one of their truly great accomplishments. A lot of people still say the 8-track demos are better, but aside from the smarter pacing of "Mary Christ," that's a ton of hooey. Put that one in the SY urban legends pile along with Kim and Thurston are trust fund babies, Kim was a heroin addict, and Sister is perceptible on Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star.

Except...nah. You gotta wait another album for that one.

Briefly, She Speaks

On the eve of the Goo review, listening to the new Shonen Knife record Free Time, reminded me of the three times I've ever had a performer put the mic to my face at a live concert.

--Kim Gordon, Chicago 2002

--Mark Mothersbaugh, DC 2005

--Naoko Yamano, DC 2007

And I didn't freeze any of those times.

Beautiful Jukebox: The Music of Sonic Youth (Selection 9--The Magic Number)

October 1988

This is it. The classic, the unhinged masterpiece, the record that influenced a thousand artistic choices. The one guaranteed to appear somewhere on someones "best of" list. The template that some grew to resent, but that all struggled to match. The one that features the Zep-esque symbols for each member, which form in a manner not unlike that of Voltron to create the "Forever Mega Devil Babe." The one that a Pixies fanatic will try to convince you is in no way on par, musically or historically, with Surfer Rosa (released the same year). The one that you try and defend to the doubters, with intelligence and dignity abetting your passion, until you notice the other drivers aren't comprehending the signs on the road and you're like fuck it, y'all can eat a dick backwards and you're compelled to reduce the SY vs Pixies argument to pictures.

is

Meanwhile...

has no choice but to be

There. I'm usually content to discuss the actual songs, but since some people running their fingers over keys like to get personal (Kim Gordon is ugly, she and Thurston are trust fund babies) because they can't handle anyone disagreeing with them, I let my IQ drop a summer day. I don't give a great goddamn if someone thinks the Pixies are superior to Sonic Youth, actually, I just seize any and all opportunities to post Peanuts pictures. It's every individual's right to have at least one opinion that is completely ass-backwards. Viva their dumb ass.

"Teen Age Riot"--So why Daydream Nation as the widely-recognized apex? It's all about the concentration and distillation of the existing elements. They're not forcing the sounds out, at least not all the time. Sometimes the sonics are coaxed, other times tricked, and there's those moments where they appear unbidden.

Vocally, our heroes bring words and voices slathered with street sauce but it would be a mistake to ghettoize their collective expression as provincial. Sonic Youth are not limited to their city. Or country. Or planet, really.

"Teen Age Riot" subverts "Schizophrenia" by starting out with Kim G.'s insouciant mantras and leading into Thurston's rocker-kid not-singing. The moment the disarmingly gentle strumming gives way to the jagged big riff, it's like hearing duende.

Like the best art, "Teen Age Riot" comes off like some metaphysical glitch whereby a chunk of my mind (subconscious and conscious both) was sent through a wormhole to a group of people almost as blissfully as ignorant of me as I of them. It's not like reading my thoughts, 'cause frankly I wouldn't get outta the sack for protesting adolescents or to vote Joe Mascis into office, it's the feeling they conjure up, like an aural facsimile of my thoughts. I get that feeling. I know that feeling. I live with it every day. I hear "Teen Age Riot" and it feels like the warm and familiar part of myself that I know I can disappear into if I need to. Just for a little while.

Thurston distilled: an eternally-youthful info-hound who recognizes the importance of studying, exploring, and archiving art and artists and the equal significance of knowing when to just say something fucking rocks. Like when the riff comes back in a couple-thirds of the way through, and Steve Shelley lets off like the motherfucking god of drums, it totally hearkens back to a time in world history when something KICKED A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF ASS. Like in Egypt or something.

"Silver Rocket"--Spin-cycle blastoff around semi-sensical spew. Thurston Moore's life in a song! If I were a baseball player, I'd want this to be my "walking-to-the-plate" music. Absolutely a great albums greatest song, in case my sudden economical approach to reviewing didn't clue you in.

Question: "How do you play a Sonic Youth song in standard tuning?"
Answer: "Very shittily."

"The Sprawl"--I told y'all--SY always got their noses in pages. William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive is the launchpad for Kim, distilled: misty, aware, sultry, sharp as a tungsten needle. "Does this sound simple? Fuck you." Come on down to the store and stay awhile. Browse. It would be nice if you bought some more more more more, but you don't have to. At least not right now.

"Cross the Breeze"--Back-to-back Kim killers, it's like the Easter Beagle comes every Sunday! Listen close and you can hear the puppet masters strings (no real wonder, then, that Bone Awl claim this track as a key influence). Kim kinda evokes "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" by the Clash, except Kim could wear a Miley Cyrus shirt, a beanie, and Mickey Mouse pajama pants and still not be anywhere close to the lameness of Mick Jones. Jonesy peed himself a little when he heard what's going on here. You are listening to masters at work, although all four to a man would tell you otherwise now as then. What SY are doing with their instrumental passages is the opposite of masturbatory and dull. It's like they think the phrase "finite expanse" is an oxymoron.

"Eric's Trip"--Space is the place to chow some bangin' BBQ and play some Ha Ha Herman. Lee's first appearance on DDN vacillates between dialogue-jackery and his own devilishly deets-skirting poetry while the falcon throttles at night.

Said bird of prayer of course being the legendary Drifter, a horse-fucked critter that once upon a time got palmed by a friend of a friend of Thurston Moore's--and somehow ended up in the possession of one Kim A. Gordon by the time he visited her apartment for the first time. Portentous!

The Drifter, goddamn. Body beat to hell for calling someone's mom a supercilious whore, tenderized by confused reindeer, and boasting strings thick as Missouri women. The Great Gear Theft of '99 robbed SY of so many wonderful instruments and implements, but losing the original Drifter may have provided the most cause for grief. Not because its absence rendered so many great songs unplayable live (Thurston used it for "Eric's Trip" and uh...yeah); I mean this was a guitar with true historic and aesthetic value now out there in the ether.

I'll take a moment from weeping and rending garments to say how much I love lyrics that ask a question the music answers. What does being "over the city, fucking the future" sound like? Listen.

"Total Trash"--Thurston's double-tracked mumble explains the wisdom of keeping the underground under the ground, allowing moles to entertain each other with creations of decidedly limited appeal. (Ain't no cash cow.)

At least...it could be. I ain't the voice of omniscience. I ain't a Seattle-based writer mishearing lyrics and avoiding research.

Trying to describe the mid-song breakdown without using orgasmic facial expressions is difficult. It's like trying to describe a panic attack. Depersonalization and derealization are nice words, but unless you've been intimately acquainted at some point with either, it's just empty text. Also, I don't want to juxtapose something so magnificent alongside something that shifts the balance of your spirit in a negative way. The recurrence of the first verse and chorus to conclude "Total Trash" is really a perfect recreation through words and music of a panic attack's immediate aftermath. Things lose focus and move much slower.

"Hey Joni"--Just give the people what they want, Ranaldo by the bucketful.

I have come to despise the word "swagger." It was hip hop that did it, and Jay-Z in particular; anyway, fuck him and his not-as-good-as-Nas ass. Look at his car, his chain, his bitch...he's got swagger. He walks in a room and don't say shit, check his swagger. (If walking in a room and keeping silent denotes a rare and special quality about a person that elevates them above the everyday plebes, I'm in fact a goddess. And the spirits talk to me.)

What it is, the word has been diluted by overuse and abuse. Shame. 'Cause if Kim and Thurston's songs stagger, Lee's have swagger. He enunciates his earthy tone-poems, no doubt down to the fact that he possessed then and possesses still the most traditionally "palatable" voice of the three singers. His emotional reports make him the ipso facto most related-to member by its hardcore fanbase. His words scrape bone and capture souls in a bottle.

"Hey Joni" marks the first time Lee has had more than one track on a single album, and what a honey drip. It's either about: Joni Mitchell; some other girl named Joni; a guy named Joe; the song "Hey Joe"; some ex of Lee's who liked and/or reminded him of Joni Mitchell; drugs and/or whores.

Shots ring out from the center of an empty field
Joni's in the tall grass
She's a beautiful mental jukebox
A sailboat explosion
A snap of electric whip crack
She's not thinking about the future
She's not spinning her wheels
She doesn't think at all about the past
She's thinking long and hard
About that wild sound
And wondering will it last?

Sometimes, I can see where all the "OHMYGODGIVELEEMORESONGSONTHEALBUMS" hysteria comes from. With nerve-twitching imagery and a mist of nostalgia that's true to that word's etymology, stacked with slash burn pillage rebuild the village sonics, all cold blue steel and sweet taboo fire, it's foolish to deny genius. So I won't. I'm just saying some o' y'all need to keep it in yer pants when Lee songs start up, okay.

Also, I have no theory what the years recited at the end are supposed to signify either, and I can't be bothered to coax a crap forth either. Why can't artists have secrets? "It's 1812..." Cool, there was a war that year.

"Providence"--Indie rock's version of the hip-hop album skit. A fan, a piano, a Watt, a frazzling weed habit...how am I not riveted after 22 years?

"Candle"--Pretty as a bride, this one. Steady pulsing light that glows and grows but never goes. The shadow ain't as aware as legend has it. Reminds me of ascending the subway station steps at Columbia Circle on a brisk November NY night and seeing the babe-blue lights forcing everyone's attention to the trees. I wanted to stand there with Patrick and just gaze, and for a bit we did. But there's only so long New York City lets one stand around and enjoy anything.

"Rain King"--Alongside the not-yet "Hoarfrost," my favorite set of Lee lyrics. The guitars here have always sounded rode hard and put away wet, which is why as a complete song I can't rank it over "Hey Joni" on the album. It lacks clarity and precision.

That said..."Marries every dictionary from his trainyard bliss." That's classic. Fuck some crap like "Werewolves of London." That song has one kill line in it (not the first ones, either, I'm talking the intrepid alliteration of "Little old lady got mutilated late last night"); "Rain King" is wholesale slaughter. Straight General Tso's on the menu.

(For your edification: a "Pitchfork kiss" is a review score between 8.0 and 9.4. A Pitchfork BJ is 9.5 to 10.0)

"Kissability"--"It's been a long time/Kim shouldn't-a left us/Without a song where she sounds breathless." I never get used to the six-song gap between Kim songs here. Amazing. (And if you say that this "breather" is one of the reasons you like Daydream so much, I'll hunt you down and knock you unconscious with an airborne chicken burrito.)

"You sigh hard." Those are the best kind. Kim making empty promises sound like carnal salvation while the boys cluck their tongues behind her.

"The Wonder"--I used to mishear "Reggie White" until I figured, why the hell would some skinny Opie motherfucker namedrop a badass football player? I dunno, why the hell would some skinny Opie motherfucker treat the guitar like he does, like it's simultaneously his deliverance and damnation?

The dysgenic elephants stampeding is forever the highlight. Babar gone wild.

"Hyperstation"--Elephants are easy to bring down, though; ever seen 20 Million Miles From the Earth?

The SY/NY walking tour now includes "Bowery to Broome to Greene" (joining Orchard and Delancey, of course).

One element that contributes to the Daydream Nation mystique are the photos by Michael Lavine. A CT boy, a transplanted Cali girl, a Midwest straight edge kid, and oh yeah an actual fucking New Yorker, all looking like they sprouted up from the vial-tiled concrete to send out signals of despair and desire for a world that most likely won't care but so what, we're from New York City fuck you. I cannot but see those pictures when I hear this song. Thurston in his tacky Zodiac shirt getting roughed up by ballers...I can see the metal chain net when I hear this song. I see ransacked apartments, cheap deli food, puddles, insomnia. I've never actually had it pinball throughout my body during any of my many sojourns in NYC though, but

"Eliminator Jr."--this song has. I guess the type friend I attract and the type places we go in the city don't lend themselves to snarling paranoia. Screeching rocking ready to hurl a brick at the whole shit, that's the type you'll find me with. (Them, and the kind like me that'll be ready with a comment on the brick's trajectory.) We got "Eliminator Jr." in our heads. Everything's cool, just duck. Or laugh.

Gone Baby

As you wait for the Daydream Nation review to materialize this weekend, I must take time to announce that No Setlist is now sold out. Thanks everyone who bought a copy and who took time out of their lives to read it. That one book made a lot of my dreams come true, and I'm glad I got to share so much with y'all.

And yeah. There's a part 2 coming.

Beautiful Jukebox: The Music of Sonic Youth (Selection 8--Twin Flame)

JUNE 1987 (please note that this picture shows the original artwork for the album, unobscured by black bars. AKA, "a naked Sister.")

"Sister is weird."--Steve Shelley
"I like Sister alot."--Kim Gordon

Whenever a piece of art is said to have multiple layers that reveal greater and deeper facets when peeled back and explored, it's only natural to use the onion metaphor. Everyone knows you peel onions. It's an easy enough reference and you don't have to wonder if any in the audience will get it. But who takes that metaphor to its logical conclusion? Artistic expression at the apex can make tears well up; it's breathtaking to realize what imagination, creativity, and ability can accomplish and engender. (Fuckin' genius, how does that work?) If EVOL was five steps forward for Sonic Youth, Sister is fifteen.

"Schizophrenia"--SY have always been eggheads likin' they booky-books; I've never known anyone to claim they like the band in spite of this (even if some fans' literary adventurousness begins and ends with Chuck Klostermann essays on Slinky commercials). Leading up to and during the recording of Sister, the novels of sci-fi lord Philip K. Dick were owning the neurons and glia of Thurston Moore in particular. One of Dick's recurrent themes in his fiction was the "phantom twin," a motif inspired by the death at five months old of his twin sister, Jane Dick. Understanding Dick's work, and the tragic impetus behind it, is to understand also that Sonic Youth are using Sister to pay homage to not only this writer and his individual integrity and courage, but to the candor and bravery displayed by the truest artists, even in the face of misunderstanding or worse, apathy.

The all-tubes studio of Walter Sear makes for some womb-like listening, for sure. Steve Shelley is notoriously not-nuts about the drum sound on the album, which was filtered through amniotic fluid and thus sounds alternately flattened, hollowed-out, and sometimes buried alive. So technically, it's a nightmare. But how many great songs are perfection? Name one song you love that doesn't have some element somewhere that wouldn't make a studio engineer have an aneurysm? So to me the drum controversy over Sister is overblown. It's not like listening to St. Anger, for Christs sake.

"Schizophrenia" proves the brouhaha pointless. The first thing we hear is Steve's incessant boom-boom-bap boom-boom-boom-bap, and it's an immaculate lead-in for the vagabond melody to come. Inspired by a mysterious visitor to Philip Dick's door ("She said Jesus had a twin/Who knew nothing about sin"), Thurston's verses are marked by a low-key delivery that makes the descent into mental ruin more affecting than any overwrought throat histrionics. The music then takes a detour before arriving at a place that may sound gentler, but is actually sharper than ever. Kim comes in then, delivering the girls plaintive split-mind monologue.

The final minute and a half is an onion field. "I know we told you we were gonna let you go, but...." Build. Sustain. Peak. Detumescence. Myotonic Youth.

"Catholic Block"--Thurston doesn't just mindlessly channel another man's thought process though, here he takes some Dick and splashes it with the guilt-juice that his own upbringing served up for him every day. Me and my father did not agree on much but goddamnit he was right about Catholicism. Wrong about race relations, gender equality, and abortion rights, but yeah, he nailed it about that cadre of kiddy-diddlers.

This time, the guitar (beautifully warbled and stretched-out) leads into Steve's beat which is aces even if the hats have a weird way of saying "hi." Straight fuckin' rocktasm, let it go to work, bring it all back home, it serves you fuckin' right.

The section right after "iron to gold" is cut way too short, so it's an undiluted vodka "fuck yeah" moment when it returns to ride out, albeit much slower and with a healthy dose of acoustic guitar floating amid all that arcing feedback.

(And if anyone doesn't know "Do you like to fuck/I guess I'm out of luck" is from a Dick novel, now you do. Quite a few lyricals on here were lifted wholesale from his work, so next time you're praising Thurston's way with words, consider that maybe you're just talking about his way with making away with another person's way with words.)

"Beauty Lies in the Eye"--Okay, but this song is the truth. Kim's first solo on Sister could almost be called psychedelic. A lions roar gets sucked into a black hole, for one thing. The chord changes are so lazy and perfect; it's like retreating under the boardwalk when a late afternoon storm drives you off the beach and your eyes keep waiting to see the gray clouds break, the rain to fall, the waves to roil, the sediments to shift. That lifeguard yelling over there can kiss my ass.

"Stereo Sanctity"--How can you not love a track that begins with a shout to the greatest year of the 20th century? Totally what that is there.

If Sonic Youth were a cartoon character, they'd be Snoopy's shades-donning hipster Joe Cool. And if Sonic Youth were a movie, they'd be Way of the Dragon. Bob Bert would be Chuck Norris, and Steve Shelley would be Bruce motherfuckin' Lee. It's a good thing I never learned to drive; I'd be like, "Yeah, I wanna take a road trip!" and then pop some SY in the player, take off, and when this song came on, I'd end up ripping the steering wheel clean off while screaming, "HEY! GOLD CONNECTIONS!" Or wreck the car just to say I did it.

Sex wishes it was as good as this song.

The last minute and a half! They do it again! Unreal. Or irreal, rather. Take a ride on the tilt-a-skirl.

"Pipeline/Kill Time"--Kim's bassline is pretty brain-dead here, but it still sounds cool as shit. Steve Shelley's drumming makes me want to eat a calla lily. The guitar makes beeswax, but forgets to store the honey. Conclusion: the rhythm section kills it. The second half of the song is different tale, spoken word and Moog flooge.

We should kill time.

Lee Ranaldo's inspiration was a friend's connubial travails, and the imagery gives this song a crepuscular feel. This is the earliest example that can be cited as proof of Lee's more emotional and earthy approach to lyrics in comparison to his comrades.

"Tuff Gnarl"--Not convinced? Check this juxtaposition, then. I enjoy boner babble and titty talk as much as the next filthy girl, but I actually have a friend who says this is her favorite SY song ever, and that's just amazing as the pyramids to me. Really? "Tuff Gnarl"?

My favorite thing is the assonance achieved when Thurston and the guitar line come together: "Amazing, grazing..."

No, actually, my favorite thing about "Tuff Gnarl" is the story Mike Watt told about playing it live with his band, and Steve Shelley sat in on drums. Watt's drummer is trying to tell Beat Patrol how to play it, and Watt's all, "Dude, this guy wrote the part!"

The word "field" is used quite a bit on this album. I approve.

"Pacific Coast Highway"--Kim Gordon and the No Good, Terrible, Very Bad Day to Start Hitchhiking. The windows are fogged-up, how are you ever going to get where you want to go? Don't worry, this won't take long.

I always enjoy a good serial killer story, even ones that skip the gory details, and especially ones that feature sunny interludes. But please don't accuse me of insensitivity, as I always take the time to acknowledge the memories of the victims. So in the case of the PCH Killer, please join me in honoring Steve Shelley's drumming on this song, which to this day has not been found.

"Hot Wire My Heart"--This is a cover of a Crime song. I have already typed one more sentence than I need to.

"Kotton Krown"--You gotta love the DGC Committee For Correct Spelling, right? Hell, I know writing No Setlist sometimes I'd be like, nah man, the K's just don't look right. Forgive me, I wrote so much of that stuff right after getting fucked in the head by the most bewitching erotic entity known to Earthlings. And enduring post-coital comedown in freezing, scummy bus terminals.

The first-ever true Kim and Thurston duet, with Kim wisely mixed lower. (I futzed with my speaker mix once upon a time, just to hear Kim more prominently here...not a great idea, really.) It's also a glorious, dissolving love song. Whether it is from one person to another or one addict to heroin, I'll let you decide. Thurston's words in interviews tend to support the former take ("It's a fine line between sensuous and sleazy," he once said in explaining how challenging he found it to write erotic lyrics, and he's right; this could have easily degraded into some MC5 "baby don't you wanna fuck some revolutionaries" shit) but you can make a compelling case for the sordid side, too, basically revolving around the fact that you filter heroin solution through a cotton ball before shootin' the shit. Hmm. (This is a very popular take on songmeanings.net, where every SY track is about drugs and/or whores.)

The lyrics really are fantastic: "angels are dreaming of you," "your carnal spirit's praying", "fading and celebrating," "I'm a Care Bear." Wait. Misheard that last one.

But understand that there is no surpassing the sounds these fools make. There's like a zoo of guitars happening in the introduction. And 2:12 to 3:51? It's like an orgasm having an orgasm. It's total show-and-tell. One minute "angels are dreaming of you," well okay, what's that like? Listen! There! That is what it's like. Now just shut up and fall in love.

"White Kross"--Shreds. Kills. "C'mon, Jenn, I need more than that!" Man, if that's what you think, you do need more. You need the Charlie Gordon surgery, buddy. This is a green underwater vessel. More Catholic guilt, as charged up as a killer whale sick to death of playing tricks for all the gawking bipeds. Give the beast its respect.

Goddamn.

Bit o' trivia: this album was almost named Humpy Pumpy. Can you imagine. Reminiscing on the great SY 80s trilogy: EVOL, Humpy Pumpy, Daydream Nation.

Bit o' plead: Charlotte Grey once did a horrid cover of "Kotton Krown." I distanced myself from it posthaste, but if you have any interest in tracking it down and killing it, I'd be much obliged.