I’m fairly old school when it comes to rock music. I like The Who, Sabbath, Cream… stuff like that. I also love some of the stranger/avant garde rock music made during the 60s and 70s such as Zappa, The Velvet Underground, and The Residents.
I don’t listen to much music that was made past 1985. I thought Soul Asylum had some good songs, and I liked some of metal music made in the 80s. And I’m a huge Ramones fan, but only their first four or five albums.
So at any rate, a friend recently suggested I listen to some Sonic Youth. “Based on your tastes, I think you’ll really like them,” he said.
So I bought* EVOL* (1986), Daydream Nation (1988), and Goo (1990) on CD. (Yea, I still listen to CDs.) I’ve been playing them in my car while traveling to and from work. I’ve probably heard each album four or five times by now.
Strange as it sounds, I still can’t decide if I like them or not.
The Good
By far the most talented member in the group is Steve Shelley. During some songs I find myself listening only to the drums.
I really like the sound effects they’re getting out of the guitars. They could have easily chosen to use a keyboard to make all the cool sounds (like so many other bands did during that era), but they’re using guitars.
Some of the “noise” pieces are pretty interesting.
Many of their songs (especially on EVOL) do not fit the typical song writing “mold.” Some, for example, do not have a chorus. This non-commercial aspect of their music appeals to me. It also means they were risk-takers, which I have respect for.
The Bad
The singing sucks. I have never heard such crappy singing from a popular band. Especially Gordon. Not only is she a bad singer, but she’s out-of-tune in many parts! Moore is a weak singer, but at least he sings in tune.
The bass playing is nothing special; it sounds like she just follows along with the guitar.
Lyrics are stupid. But that doesn’t bother me much since I usually don’t care much about lyrics anyway.
I’ve tended to see the poor singing as a feature rather than a bug. Yes, neither Moore nor Gordon will win any awards for it, but it suits the overall sound of the band very well.
No arguments. The vocals are a distraction and I don’t find the songs compelling enough to keep me engaged. Respect their interesting place in indie history more than I listen to them. Sounds like Thurston Moore was a douchebag to Kim Gordon after years of marriage, but I am not deep on details.
There’s a certain stoner-rock-iness to Sonic Youth, the experimentation, the trippy sounds, the noise guitar solos, the silly, zero effort lyrics (I gotta cotton… croooownnn…) You certainly need to be fine with the whole experience before enjoying a song.
I saw Thurston Moore in San Francisco years ago at a smaller club. I thought I was going to get Sonic Youth but I mainly only got the “noise” pieces. Trust me when I say it gets a lot less fucking “interesting” after about 30 minutes of it.
Never a big fan of the Sonic Youth, however, I saw them at a Halloween concert once about 25 years ago, and it was totally spooky and rocked. I was not expecting that.
My favorite band for decades. My thoughts on your thoughts:
The Good:
Steve Shelley is positively amazing. He’s one of the most fluid drummers, ever. The early albums he doesn’t appear on are much more angular rhythmically.
The sounds they get on guitars are pretty unique. Keyboards could approximate it, but it would be quite a bit of work to approximate the sound of jamming a screwdriver under the strings of a guitar that’s tuned to the point where it’s non-western. Some people say the guitars are out of tune, but they don’t know what they’re talking about. They guitars are intentionally in that tuning, and you can tell on live recordings when they’re out of tune.
Oh yeah, if you don’t like some “noise” pieces, you’re probably listening to the wrong band.
Yeah, it was a little strange when Daydream Nation came out, and about half the songs had normal rock structures. They do more of that for a few more albums, and then go back the other way.
The Bad:
Ehh, when you’re dealing with non-western idea of tuning, the vocals are probably going to be the hardest to absorb. Kim often just speaks. I think it works, but that’s a matter of taste.
I’m a bass player. I have a lot of respect for Kim’s bass playing*. Since the guitar parts are so alien to anything else accompanied by the instrument, she’s in uncharted territory.
Yeah, the lyrics aren’t necessarily about what rock songs are normally about. I don’t usually really hear the lyrics to a song in the first few listens. When I finally hear SY’s lyrics, they’re vague/abstract enough that you can put a lot of different interpretations on them. In the end, I like them.
Ehh, I find them no more pretentious than your average Prog rock band, probably less so. I find they don’t take themselves very seriously. Reasonable people can disagree on that one.
*Full disclosure, we’re related. So I may be biased by that as well.
Aye, this is close to how I view them. There’s way too much melody for my taste, way too much wussy angst and way too much cleverness. I don’t hate them and in fact have fond memories of wonderful times in college where we were listening to EVOL and Daydream Nation in particular.
I appreciate their willingness to experiment and am glad that so many people were in turn influenced by that and by them.
But I don’t have any of their albums in my 5000+ album collection.
I enjoyed enough tracks off of Goo and Dirty to consider them worthwhile additions to my music collection. But Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star barely interested me at all beyond the big single, and by the time that Washing Machine rolled around, I more or less knew that I was going to be focusing my musical attentions elsewhere. They just had a much greater appetite for noise and experimentation than I ever did.
I love SY and have pretty much all the full-lengths they’ve released. I wouldn’t want to see them live, however, as I find myself curating even as I listen, particularly because - as the OP noted - Gordon’s vocals can be really grating, and sometimes songs just don’t work.
Still, their energy and sounds are fantastic, and I’d stack most of Dirty or Daydream Nation against any other band.
Daydream Nation is a masterpiece, in my opinion. Sister is pretty close. Their earlier noisier stuff is good but not on the same level. After Goo the quality dropped off; diminishing returns.
It’s complete nonsense to call their tunings “non-western”, though, and I say that as a guitarist who uses non-standard tunings all the time. And also as a guitarist who is a big fan of actual non-western music and who has played with genuine non-western musicians.
Of all the things I love about Sonic Youth, their music isn’t one of them. I appreciate what they were doing more than I want to actually listen to it. Still, they are really good at what they do. Lord knows I like enough dissonant weird crap that I won’t say anything against people who enjoy Sonic Youth. And they did great things for the scene and rock in general.
The worst thing they did though, was make what they were doing seem easy. If you want to appreciate how great Sonic Youth are at what they do, go see a band that is trying to be like them. I swear if I never see another guitar player attempting to play his guitar with a Mikita Drill it will be too soon.
They tuned the strings to intervals less than a half step apart. At that point they’ve consciously left the 12 tone scale. How is that within the western tradition?
Thanks for putting it perfectly for me. One of my fave tunes around 88 or so was “White Cross”, off Sister. That propulsive drum beat on the toms - thunderous fun!
Fair enough, assume my earlier statement to be “outside of the expected western tonality”. Gah, that’s a klunky phrase. How about “outside of 12 tone music”? “Extra-western?”