- CONFUSION IS SEX/ KILL YR. IDOLS
- EVOL
- SISTER
- DAYDREAM NATION Federico's review / Ian's review
I once had a roommate in college who was into uncommercial rock music and described this album to me as being more like an art exhibit than an actual record. Like such an exhibit, the pieces were placed in essentially random order and could be observed in any other order without damaging the album as a whole. Every song is really more a demonstration of this particular "period" in the artists' work, marked by stylistic devices and a mood rather than their place within the album running order. I couldn't have said it better myself. To bad both the style and mood suck pretty hard.
Maybe I should have expected that, since this is the Sonic Youth's first record and they did get their start in the New York no wave scene. No wave was supposed to be based on industrial style noise with a minimum of all that melodic BS that had messed up the mainstream, so of course its not going to make for easy listening. Still, did it have to be this unpleasant and minimalistic? There is barely a single normal chord progression on the entire album, just a bunch of rhythmically timed guitar noises and the very occassional dissonant riff. More annoying is the remarkable lack of ideas the band is actually demonstrating here. Every note of the album could easily be classified as one of the following: low metal-on-metal scraping, quiet guitar humming with a little distortion, dual bass and/or lead guitar droning, scronkey dissonant chords being banged repeatedly, or detuned strumming which sounds like a huge metallic wind chime made of lead pipes. Just rearrange and juxtapose these thirteen times and there's your album. Needless to say, everything starts blurring together and sounding the same by about the fourth track.
It's not that the record is totally devoid of good points. I'll admit that the opening two numbers are pretty interesting, albiet from an intellectual viewpoint only. The first called "She's In A Bad Mood" is a creepy little number which starts out with a metal-on-metal scrape and then lurches into its scary bass melody. We get some lyrics about a bad relationship and the whole thing turns into a guitar drone which gets progressively higher and higher till it peters out in clusters of twinkling high pitched dissonance. The next number, "Protect Me You" also has a pretty creepy air with it detuned, strummed riff and Kim singing (something she wouldn't do very often later so much as scream) a little bit of paranoid poetry about a girl/woman who needs continuous protection from herself. After this, however, the band begins to lose its course almost immediately with the crappy "Freezer Burn/ I Wanna Be Your Dog". This number consists of nothing more than a minute and a half of quiet feedback followed by some horribly recorded segment from a live performance (seriously, did they just hook up a tape recorder in the back and turn it on? I can't believe what we're hearing was made with a professional microphone). As previously stated, everything more or less blurs together after this point, though occasionally moments do sort of stick out. "Shaking Hell" is an anti-dance song (I think) with Kim shouting some more (I'll take off your dress/I'll shake off your flesh) and a jerky dissonant chord hit over and over. "Inhuman" could literally be "She's In A Bad Mood" II were not for the processed male vocal and the fairly notable screamed chorus. "The World Looks Red" is yet more hipster poetry shouted to a dissonant riff as is "Confusion is Next" (some sort of anarchist political manifesto I think, damned pretensious too). And "Making The Nature Scene" is, *gasp*, more hipster poetry shouted by Kim over a dull bass drone. Then the band decides to be outright annoying and does a detuned, lazy, nearly ambient jam for three and a half F*%# minutes on the closing track "Lee Is Free" (I'm fairly sure that this jam is really only one guitar being plucked over and over with a ton of echo).
What about the EP? It's basically more of the same with the title track being a pretty ferocious punk-type number and Thurston Moore screaming as violently as he does anywhere else on the album. "Brother James" is impossibly nondescript drone and it all bottoms out with "Early Americans", a six minute tune which never gets above midtempo and easily comes off as the worst thing on the album simply for being so boring. Then it ends with an OK live performance of "Shaking Hell".
That's really about it. As I said earlier, the songs don't really come together to form an album so the effect is more to create a steady mood than anything else, and I'll admit that it does that pretty effectively. Yet, this mood is really nothing more than pure nihilism and unless you particularly enjoy hating everything and everybody, I'd advise to stay clear. The album is evocative, but only of the dingiest, ugliest parts of New York, cool but so cool that it just comes off as deeply cold and ultimately indifferent. There's enough focus there to be interesting (much more than I can say for their sophmore LP) so it makes an interesting historical artifact of no wave at large if nothing more. Too bad its also an artifact I can more than do without.
I gotta admit, I went into this album with more than a little trepedation. Virtually everyone to review the SY on the internet seems to view it as one of the group's all-time weakest efforts and, considering that I hated Confusion Is Sex, that did not supply very much encouragement. Still, somewhere in my mind I was also hoping that I would be pleasantly surprised and my first couple minutes of listening actually seemed to encourage rather than discourage this sentiment. Here in relatively succinct terms were my thoughts on these opening moments:
"Wow. This is unexpected-an all guitar introduction with no dissonance-hey... it's beautiful! A nice little waltz vamp, sorta warm and peaceful. Those slidy guitar noises in the background are so hypnotic and comforting."
Next came "Brave Men Run (In My Family)"
"Thursten and the gang must really have learned from their mistakes last time!- there's a lovely little power poppy riff (sorta chimes like U2) and the intro part is still going- Here's a dissonant part but it ROCKS. Absolutely crushing and awesomely powerful-I'm still not thrilled about Kim's vocals but she's actually a pretty nice counterpoint to the melody"
Then "Society Is a Hole"
"That tape loop whinnying in the background is really atmospheric and the bass-guitar melody is cool in a mournful sort of way- The vocals are a bit slow moving but some of the lyrics are funny "you got big, big hair/and everybody's scared" heh! way to stick it to the '80s pop culture!- I think I'm really going to like this album. Heck, maybe I'll even give it a thirteen. Why's everyone underrate this record so much? Hey... what the-"
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the point where my enjoyment ran out and the pain began. The reason I found the proceedings so difficult, is that after "Society Is a Hole" there are no more real songs, save "Death Valley '69" which would have been a nice little rocker with a propulsive riff if it A) didn't go on for twice the length it should B)didn't repeat the main theme until absolute tedium took over and C) Didn't feature Lydia Lunch doing her horrible Yoko Ono-like vocals which are supposed to sound horny but are just very, very shrill and unlistenable.
Honestly, "I Love Her All The Time" and everything after are
basically just one long noise collage so endless and devoid of ideas that it
defies description. Sometimes the band jams (noise jams mostly), sometimes a
tape loop comes up (these can be atmospheric like the loop at the end of "I'm
Insane", yet they are repeated so much and so aimlessly that any impact they
might have had is entirely destroyed), sometimes the band jams over a loop,
sometimes one of the band members even gets up to do some meaningless spoken
word poetry (this is usually delivered slowly, and without emphasis so several
numbers ("I'm Insane", "Satan Is Boring") actually drag on past the five minute
mark. When, once in a rare while, the poetry does make sense, I'd really rather
it didn't ("Halloween" is an odd, tedious account of Kim seeing Thurston singing
set to minimalistic backing, "Flower" is a laugh out loud stupid pseudo-feminist
chant from Kim including the phrase "Use the word, FUCK!!! The word is Love!")
Oh yeah, wierd electronic echoes and sound processing effects are added too,
just to contribute an ominous/spacy atmosphere at some points. Was this supposed
to be funny? The song titles would seem to indicate humor now and then (why
did they call the first song "Brave Men Run (In My Family)" anyway?), yet if
humor is the goal it's clearly more a joke on the audience than anything.
Ultimately, I can only draw one conclusion: this album is inexcusably lazy.
The Sonic Youth seem to have set out to create an LP and EP without enough good
material to even fill the EP entirely. Their last album may have been impossible
to listen to, but at least it represented a serious artistic statement whereas
this is just the band killing time. As only a quarter of this recording actually
constitutes music, I should divide fifteen by four and round up to a final rating
of four. Instead, I've chosen to be nice because the beginning, ruined as it
is by what comes after, still shows that these guys had real talent and the
ability to use it well. Otherwise, Bad Moon Rising is one BAD album.
Mail your comments and reviews!
Though I've yet to listen to everything the SY did during the course of their lengthy oeuvre in the indie rock circuit, I'm willing to bet based on what I have heard that this is the single most drastic departure of the band's career. Before it, the Sonics had been a rag-tag bunch of avante-garde/no wavers who didn't give a crap about accessibility and had no trouble creating industrial dissonance or noisy semi-improvised psychedelia in equal measures. Afterward, the noise remained but it was generally placed in the context of relatively coherent patterns and semi-catchy melodies. The results of said transition are definitely weird (the term "weird" comes up in virtually every song description written while listening to EVOL) and hipster-ish, but enjoyable enough to be listened to on a semi-regular basis and the beginning of SY's most influential period.
From the opening notes it is apparent that we're not listening to the same band heard on Bad Moon Rising or Confusion is Sex as a fairly conventional riff is stated immediately and accompanied by Thurston Moore singing on "Tom Violence". This number is heavy and slow, maybe even a little draggy. Yet, the lyrics have some truely excellent moments. I especially like the lines: "My violence is a sleeping head/Nodding out to rising bliss/I left home for experience/Carved "suk for honesty" on my chest". The whole first album side promptly follows suit. "Star Power" actually manages to be sing-songey (Kim gives another rare performance singing) though this is broken up by an ominous middle of pounding drum & bass with swirling riffage and long fast runs of single notes. "In the Kingdom #19" is poetry set to jamming as on Bad Moon Rising (a really graphic and ugly description of a car wreck, presumably Lee finds inspiration in such things), but this poetry is far more coherent than the stream of consciousness crap all over that LP and the jamming has a real propulive kick to it with few slow parts and tons of sound effects (one bizarre firecracker noise was notoriously the result of Thurston playing a practical joke). Heck, this just about makes me curious to find out what other 18 parts of Lee's little epic sounded like. "Green Light" is sort of dull, but again has enough of a flow to keep me out of the doldrums (and a heavily distorted melancholic riff coming up at the end). However, the second track entitled "Shadow of a Doubt" really takes the cake for best song with its eerie collage of microtonal plucking and bass (or is that piano? I'm still not totally sure) and a creepy loud middle. Kim's lyrics are especially facinating: a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train", yet named after another Hitchcock film.
As for the second side, its a bit disappointing with none of the songs really living up to the first half. "Death To Our Friends" could easily be an extension of "Green Light" though the rising and falling melody has its moments. "Secret Girl" is *seriously* bizarre: a minute of clomping noises and bird call guitar sounds followed by... a quietly reflective piano line? Wha!?!? Kim proceeds to recite an account of how her mom thought she was a boy who could enjoy invisibility or something like that. Interesting. "Marilyn Moore" starts with the sound of Thurston calling his cattle home (?) and proceeds into a fairly uninteresting gloom rocker about a woman who's totally messed up. We get to hear more of the Sonics making all variety of noise with their instruments. "Expressway to Yr. Skull" was the album's original ending track and it had potential to be the best song with its high energy opening, nasty lyrics ("I wanna kill all the california girls"), super fast drone/jam, and eventual slow down into a low hum of roiling sound. Unfortunately, its ruined at the last second when this low hum lasts for three totally pointless minutes and sucks every ounce of energy out of what came before. Then, we end on a distinctly crappy note with "Bubblegum", a pop song featuring Thurston and Kim harmonizing. Too bad the melody is just plain irritating and what guitar jamming comes on at the middle and end is nothing more than generic '80s pop/metal.
All in all, there's still a lot to be desired. The songs all sound uncomfortably similar, revealing a good deal of artistic limitation which SY would continue to ram up against for most of their remaining career. Also, as previously mentioned, energy levels are never stable or driven enough to hold my interest perfectly. Still EVOL is a big change for this band and it moved them toward the direction they needed to go in the future. Not bad, all in all.
Mail your comments and
reviews!
It seems that most people regard this as a huge step forward from the band's last album in terms of nearly everything. Better arrangements, better songs, and a new "warm" production style to boot! Well, at least one of those is true: the sound quality is slightly warmer so some of the SY's feedback is a little less grating than usual. There's much, MUCH more noise here than on EVOL though so it doesn't make the whole thing more listenable anyway and I can only wonder why the band decided to warm up in the first place. And the music? It's problematic.
I definitely find myself paraphrasing Mark Prindle while describing this album: it sounds like the band has a ton of ideas, some good-some bad, and they have no idea which is which. The resulting sound is essentially a series of relatively generic albiet energetic songs (mostly punk and arena rock) that have tons of feedback, squeeling, buzzing, and yelling dumped on top of them. This is not to say the album is a disorganized mess (most noise is actually well textured and arranged). Heck, transcentant moments come up every now and then. Some last nearly the whole song length. However, these are always interrupted by something else, and usually a very stupid tuneless something else. Song for song its remarkably even in the good/bad idea ratio too, meaning that chosing favorites is just plain impossible.
As for those transcentant moments I mentioned earlier... there's a pretty good number. Things never get boring enough for me to absolutely hate the proceedings, only dull enough for me to wish they'd move faster. Songs like "Tuff Gnarl" with its slow build up from a fast rocker to a brutal howling roar are commendable even if they don't inspire any real emotion and take too long to get where they're going. "Pacific Coast Highway" involves a tuneless, vaugly threatening Kim vocal which is interrupted in the middle, to my amazement, by a perfectly tuneful laid back guitar riff which then fuzzes into more of Kim. Why not use the riff for something better? I have to clue. There's some flat out novelty tunes like "Hot Wire My Heart" and "Master-Dik" (I'll be ripping the latter to shreds in a moment). Heck, "Hot Wire My Heart" is nothing more than AC/DC-type cock rock with a layer of static and crappy production disguising it! "Pipeline/Kill Time" actually features some really funny lyrics from Lee "Stretch me to the point where I stop/ Run ten thousand miles then think of me/I think you know the place where we should meet/ Don't worry if its dark and I'm late" and at least one facinatingly tremulous guitar sound from Thurston before the whole thing becomes a crappy jam. The list goes on and on. I suppose "White Cross" is filler too by virtue of sheer unmemoribility, but really "Tuff Gnarl" is made of the same stuff so its hard for me to say. Only "Master -Dik" really sticks out as utter shit. Its a bunch of wierd tape loops a la Bad Moon Rising which include some old R&B tunes and a bunch of church bells (!) while Thurston screams, raps, and grooves over it all (No I'm not making this up. I think it's supposed to be a parody of Run DMC or something). This isn't even pretensious, its just STUPID. Stupid in a really annoying, pointless, unpleasant sort of way, not to mention smug.
I guess there's one other thing of note in the album which needs mentioning: Kim and Thurston's love for one another is more obvious here than on anything else the band had released up to 1987. There are actually two numbers devoted to this theme, first the industrial, eerie "Beauty Lies in the Eyes" ending in Kim warmly saying "Hey sweetheart, hey beautiful, hey fox come here" and second in "Cotton Crown". Heck, its almost sort of embarassing to here these two indie lovebirds harmonizing over lines like "New York City is forever Kitty" and "Angels are dreaming of you". Sure is cute though. Oh, and Kim's half naked on the back of the album. On to Daydream Nation!
Mail your comments and reviews!
70 minutes of bad taste and boredom, that's all. I wonder why
people who...
a) Can't play instruments
b) Can't sing
c) Can't compose any decent songs
d) Use only childish feedback
e) Write the exact same song 20 times, hoping to write ONE good song
...have to bother us with this crap? Tell me why, please???????
No, no, I'm joking, this was only my first reaction to this album. Maybe I'm
allergic too all the punk, post-punk and grunge stuff, but I think that Sonic
Youth are really overrated. And Daydream Nation is usually considered
one of their masterpieces!!! Of course, for some aspects Sonic Youth should
be considered by all rock critics, since they have a lot of importance for the
fact they influenced and shaped a lot of the music that comes after them, fusing
the old punk stuff with some interesting incursions into the mysterious world
of feedback (the fusion with punk is a point in favour to their originality,
but really, after most of the post-75 bands, they have very few originality,
just think that all possible kinds of feedback were completely explored by Who,
Velvet Underground, Hendrix, Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Soft Machine... and
20 years before!!!!!). Of course, they were innovative, they had the courage
to try this kind of stuff again in the 80's, and especially to link it with
the thoughts and the feeling of the most recent period. If sometimes 60's electronic
music sounds experimental for the sake of being experimental, or just a sort
of "acid-test", now we find that these guys used their supposed "weird feature"
to introduce us into a world of desperation, depression, angry people and frustration,
much nearer to us than flower power (very debatable, this point, what I mean
is that I think very few of us have experienced what was a night in UFO-club,
full of LSD, with the Fugs or the Deviants singing against the war in Vietman,
or took part to hippies parties in San Francisco or to Woodstock). I mean that
usually all the experimental music of the 60's was made also as a sign of reaction
against "the system", but generally the attitude was something like... "with
love and music we'll change the world"; in the end of the 80's the mood wasn't
the same, and the experimentalism was used to underline the oppressed condition
of the man. And in this sense Sonic Youth were important, and their weirdness
is something unique, but the main fact, to me, about them is the total lack
of any kind of talent. But know let's analyze this album, in particular, trying
to find any sign of their lack of talent.
They can't sing, it's quite obvious, but when their atonal, melodiless, cold
and robotic voices are backed by tasteful feedback or guitar chords (like in
"Total Trash" or in the beginning of "Teen Age Riot"), they are very pleasant
to listen to, the give you a sense of bewilderment and loss, something I've
never expected from soulless voices. "Silver Rocket" is one of the most rocking
numbers here, but its main flaw consists in the thin drums part, that is really
indecent. The opener, "Teen Age Riot", is maybe the best here, with the song
going more and more menacing, after the slow intro, with the distorted guitar
and the female-bassist whispering the lyrics; the riff is quite good, too. Another
very good song is "Cross The Breeze", with the best feedback-based instrumental
part of the album: very dark and menacing, it's worth the entire album. Of course,
the guys have a (little) sense of melody, as showed in "Candle", that starts
as a slow and delicate ballad and increases slightly in power: not exactly a
great melody, but the intro is really delicate and cool, especially thanks to
the smooth guitars. "The Trilogy" is epitomized weirdness, at times, of course:
usually the distorted instrumental bothers you with their uniformity. Sometimes
I've heard people complaining about the self-indulgence of the experimental
song "Providence"; ok, maybe the experimentation wasn't that successful, but
at least, it sounds a bit different from the rest of the album. Uniformity is
surely the main flaw of this album: as I said in the introduction, they write
the same exact song in the hope of finding a new hit: a couple of slow chords
in the beginning, the drums increasing in power, a distorted instrumental in
the middle, the same vocal approach. And it's also a double album, this is not
epitomized weirdness, but epitomized boredom!!! There are lots of songs sounding
really the same, and sometimes, as in "Eric's Trip", the music (in this specific
case: the riff), isn't so good, or better, it's often uninspired, a rip-off
of the better songs. In conclusion the album is extremely derivative (a lot
of punk stuff not changed, only hidden by the distorsions and feedback), uninspired
and generic. But with some tasteful exceptions.
Any comments or reviews to grant us with?
Now THIS is a genuine breakthrough. It took'em almost half a decade to pull it off, but the band has finally made a serious improvement in their guitar rock sound and managed an album which, though not a masterpiece per se, is still pretty darned cool (and the only record of theirs I'd recommend the casual listener pick up at this juncture). Forget the massive influence Daydream Nation had: the melodies here represent a unique sensibility and are actually fun to listen to most of the time. The noise has been pulled back from Sister and is used more for embellishment, while guitars dominate andwash over one another in a blur of sound. Admittedly this takes some time getting used to, and a few listens are required to fish out exactly what each melody is, but they're worth the search.
Good moments pop out all over, especially on the first half. The opening number "Teen Age Riot" is a rollicking good strum-rocker with Kim murmuring hypnotically for a minute at the beginning before everything bursts forth into an awsome Thurston vocal accompanied by what may be the band's catchiest guitar riff to date. Nirvana practically stole their entire sound from "Silver Rocket"'s dissonant, conflicted chorus, and "'Cross The Breeze" features a cool thrashing rhythm counterpointed by an almost King Crimson-like riff. The overall effect is exactly like being right at the center of a tornado. Then there's "Eric's Trip", an awsome Lee number in which the whole band drones so hard and fast that the song develops a freaky psychadelic feel. The music itself seems to be trembling with the sheer reverberation of each guitarist's playing and Lee's lyrics are AWESOME. Why hasn't he tried this hard before? Suddenly, rather than free form goofing, there are all kinds of actual poetic devices in there and hauntingly creepy imagery. There's even an optimistic ballad entitled "Candle" which starts out with some warm strumming before launching into weird time signatures, great riffs, and a climactic explosion of dissonance that perfectly sums everything up. More generally, everything that is supposed to be fast feels fast and gets to the point quicker. Heck, the band almost has enough ideas to pull off an album of this length... almost.
Unfortunately, this is still the Sonic Youth so things are pretty uneven at some points too. Virtually every number outside of those just mentioned needs to either be cut down or cut out completely. "Total Trash" sounds too much like "The Sprawl" and both need to lose about three minutes from their running times (though that noise collage in the middle of "Total Trash" is pretty nice if you listen to it alone). "Hey Joni" is a super fast, super forgettable punk-type number that goes on for four and a half minutes and only has a few interesting moments (Lee yelling out "HEY!" about three quarters of the way through rocks though). "Kissability" feels just plain unnecessary (why won't Kim stop writing these feminist numbers? Can't she find something else to talk about?). Most incriminating is the ending "Trilogy" which features three tunes that should have been B-sides stuck together in an endless 15 minute snoozefest and "Providence" which ends up as another of the band's patented noise collages featuring an answering machine message with odd piano plunking away underneath.
I guess the only way to really end this review is with the old lament that a good double album would have made a great single one. For the first time, the SY actually had enough material to produce something listenable all the way through and unique at the same time. They're also showing real flexibility, bending noisy parts into larger song structure to produce deliberate effects and provide a little variety (note I said a little, since the band's guitar tone is still nearly identical throughout, same-ness causes boredom in such a guitar dominated record). Is this their masterpiece? I've still got some hope that Goo will turn out to be better. Is it worth a look? Definitely, yes.
Mail your comments and
reviews!