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I can’t think of a single band that better epitomizes the young Gen-X dilettante too-cool-for-school hipster bohemian New York art rock aesthetic better than Sonic Youth. When I think of the immediate wimpy American post-Talking Heads art school punks, Sonic Youth wins right away (with Pixies, Pavement, Guided by Voices, Superchunk, Dinosaur Jr., and Sebadoh coming later, but nevertheless also carry the torch in their own right). The funny thing is, Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon are too old to be part of Generation X! And while Kim Gordon holds a Bachelors degree in Fine Arts, Thurston Moore dropped out of college after one quarter, so he’s a fucking art school wannabe!
Formed in 1981 as part of the burgeoning New York no wave scene, which rejected new wave’s commercial appeal and punk music’s rehashing of established rock music tropes, Sonic Youth was an underground cult success for the better part of the ’80s. From the very start, the writing and vocal duties were evenly split between Thurston and Kim, which is likely what helped them stand apart from many of their less-successful contemporaries. As the decade went on, the band became more rock and roll friendly while maintaining a trademark sound achieved by (purposely) tuning their instruments improperly. However, even the early Sonic Youth output wasn’t particularly “noisy” anyway, and their progression to alternative rock makes sense since they seemed to have been frontin’ a little bit in the first place with their early desire to make challenging fuck-you music. Needless to say, their rock-oriented albums are better.
They achieved mainstream success in the ’90s after their breakout 1988 album Daydream Nation put them on the map and their 1990 album Goo further increased the momentum significantly. From that point forward they maintained a successful career that was only moderately inconsistent at its very worst until disbanding in 2013 (steered predominately by Gordon and Moore’s divorce in 2011 after 27 years of marriage). They left behind 15 studio albums, a mess of experimental SYR (Sonic Youth Recordings) releases, an archive of live performances that they have been steadily releasing to the public on a routine schedule since 2018, and some other odds and ends that I might review someday maybe. Thurston Moore maintains a spotty, rather invisible solo career. Kim Gordon put out her first solo album ever in 2019 at the age of 66, and it kicks a lot of ass. She has more talent than Moore anyway, she got her degree! I don’t give a tinker’s fuck about Lee Ranaldo.
JUMP TO:
(1983) Confusion Is Sex
(1985) Bad Moon Rising
(1986) EVOL
Confusion Is Sex (1983) – Rating: 7/10
No Full Album Review Yet
Early Sonic Youth wanted to create atmospheres of dark, unsettling drone-based mud. Yeah, who didn’t? That’s not new territory whatsoever in 1983. Luckily for them, though, their tendency to keep things melodic in spite of their efforts against making melodies resulted in dark, unsettling drone-based, but occasionally catchy, mud.
For 1983 standards, Confusion Is Sex is a frightening experience and it’s unique to the Sonic Youth catalog. It sounds like the band has dragged the listener into the woods for a séance ritual, and the woods are adjacent to a long-abandoned steel mill in a ghost town. The sinister sensations, Thurston and Kim’s wavering, deadpan voices, the odd, experimental techniques they use to make the instruments sound otherworldly and foreboding. They nail the mood handily.
I imagine Sonic Youth could have left their legacy on this album alone, pioneering (along with Swans) the American version of industrial and experiment creep-o-rama post-punk. Speaking of Swans, the best track on Confusion Is Sex “The World Looks Red” was written by the skeezy-even-when-he-was-young Swans frontman Michael Gira. He reworked the track into a peaceful drone for Swans’ 2016 album The Glowing Man, but it works pretty well here with Moore’s frustrated and disillusioned vocal delivery (“People with fish eyes, the ground SUCKS!“). Although, Gordon’s vocals are more effective on her tracks since her naturally cold and husky voice pairs perfectly with the chirping and bleating and groaning of the guitars, the thumping bass, the rickety drums.
Good album, not their best. It could’ve been someone’s best, but Sonic Youth are more talented than this.
Bad Moon Rising (1985) – Rating: 6/10
No Full Album Review Yet
The second album is fine, but’s probably their worst one for no other reason besides that it largely retreads the sounds and moods already established on Confusion Is Sex without bringing much new to the table.
The “songs” are a little less “songy-y” overall, with more of that Swans-style talking over throbbing basslines and screeching guitars than exhibited on the debut. Hell, “Society Is a Hole” begins with sampling of rock music’s biggest fuck-you statement of all time, Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. My minor issue with Bad Moon Rising overall is, while Gordon’s thick feminine timbre enhances the texture of these spooky, pummeling riffs, Moore’s voice doesn’t even have a fraction of the weight and intensity of Swans’ Michael Gira. For this very reason, tracks like “Satan Is Boring” don’t deliver as adequately as one would hope.
The social politics of Bad Moon Rising are more overt, too. People find “I Love Her All the Time”, sung by Moore, sexy, but I think it’s horribly off-putting (in a good way, but certainly not sexy, unless weird serial killers are sexy or something). In “Flower” (and “Halloween”, which is just a minor reworking of “Flower”, both tracks tacked on to the end of the now-standard CD version), Gordon urges the listener to “Support the power of women/Use the power of man” which is all too sadly relevant even today, 36 years later.
I have a hard time ranking this above a 6, though. I feel like this is more of a meandering from the career path than an actual stepping stone along the way. Not at all bad, but not at all momentous.
EVOL (1986) – Rating: 8/10
No Full Album Review Yet
Transition album! New label, new drummer, new visions. Good thing they didn’t stick with the formula forever. EVOL marks the beginning of the indie rock sensibilities that would continue from this point forward with all of Sonic Youth’s studio albums until their breakup, and thus it’s the perfect jumping-in point for anybody. I mean, listen to Daydream Nation first of course. But EVOL is good.
This album doesn’t coalesce Sonic Youth’s essence quite so definitively yet. Although everything here, barring some exceptions, sounds unmistakably like rock music, taking a step back reveals that the band is still trying to find their footing as they explore their personally uncharted territories. Elements of their previous two albums stubbornly persist (the spoken-word “In the Kingdom #19” and the dingy “Secret Girl” feel like spruced-up holdovers from Confusion Is Sex/Bad Moon Rising), but much of it mixes beautifully with their newfound desire to present songs that actually sound like songs, even overcompensating at times with it. I mean, come on, the same band who wrote “I’m Insane” wrote “Starpower” a year later? What’s going on?? There’s still that vibe, though, that rebellious, nihilistic attitude that suggests maybe this is the future of hardcore and that Sonic Youth are at the frontlines. Ha! Right, I just threw up in my mouth a little. But the band wants you to believe that to an extent, and confidence is everything.
Oh yeah, the music. The first three tracks make the new alternative rock direction clear: the mellow “Tom Violence”, the speckled synth droplets of “Shadow of a Doubt”, the somber yet poptimistic “Starpower”. If anything, the disaffected voices of Thurston and Kim (and the many moments of screeching guitar dissonance) are even more powerful as a contrast. The instrumental “Death to Our Friends” predicts the jammed-out hypnosis of ’90s Sonic Youth and is an underrated track in the middle of the album. “Expressway to Yr. Skull” (known as “Madonna, Sean and Me” or “The Crucifixion of Sean Penn” depending on the release you’re listening to) may be a tad overlong with minutes of minimalistic nothingness tacked on at the end, but the band was never very good at editing down anyway. And they never will be. Fuck it.
I can’t speak enough about why EVOL might just be the single most important Sonic Youth album. I’ll save it for a full review someday.
