Cooler Than You: Sonic Youth

Jim: Sonic Youth's first release is okay music. Recently, several people have tried to give it more credit than it is due, trying to rank it with Sister and Daydream Nation, and I don't think that's right, nor do I really think it is fair. The songs are bare NYC, but most of this EP's charm comes from the fact that the same guy who was singing about it taking a teenage riot to get him out of bed and how schizophrenia is taking control also used to sing a whole song about the Burning Spear. I wonder if they still keep in contact with Richard Edson.

Daniel: Good stuff, with a nice hard edge, but still a little embryonic.

Jim: I would still rather hear Kim sing "I wanna be your dog" than whatever it is about subway slashers eating cherry tomatoes that she sings on Murray Street.

Spencer: I would too, although Murray Street is pretty high in the Sonic Youth pantheon for me. "Plastic Sun" is the only misstep. As for Confusion Is Sex as a whole, I was actually immediately drawn to it. It's also the most appropriately titled Sonic Youth record. Such a rough, unpolished, confusing sound—yet so undeniably attractive. One of those very primitively no wave/punk records that seems to emanate from inside your head, or at least your gut. "Making the Nature Scene" is classic.

Adam: Confusion is Sex is one of the few post No New York era albums that can rightly and without question be called no wave.

Daron: Basically this record changed me a lot. When Ned and I skipped school and would go to Raunch Records, this is one of the things that Ned bought early on, and it was something we would listen to regularly. It changed how I viewed music dramatically. Like Dan said, it is all about the atmosphere, and it is amazing. This record also makes it into my #1 slot regularly.

Ned: Bad Moon Rising is just a ridiculously good record, maybe not always the thing I enjoy listening to the most when I'm looking for rock and roll fun, but still probably Sonic Youth's most definitive collection. It's completely steeped in noise, atonal, arrhythmic at times, and absolutely mind blowing in its emotional intensity. I used to love lying on the floor of my bedroom, listening to the fucked-up-beautiful classic "I Love Her All the Time" at full volume on the headphones, then immediately flipping the record to absorb its nightmarish opposite "Ghost Bitch." To me, that was the ultimate Sonic Youth head rush.

Daniel: EVOL, the beginning of the classic Sonic Youth period. Not quite as good as Sister, The Whitey Album, or Daydream Nation, but almost as good, and better than anything that came before it.

Daron: Amazing mix of noise, beauty and chaos. EVOL is almost a perfect album... if it wasn't for "Bubblegum" it would be perfect.

Spencer: Pretty great stuff. "Tom Violence" is a classic opening track, and "Shadow of a Doubt" is the best song ever written and recorded to play at night, or at least in the dark. Nothing after that tops those two, but it remains consistent all the way through "Expressway to Yr Skull." "Bubblegum" sucks, but I don't count it.

Spencer: This is my favorite Sonic Youth album. "Schizophrenia" is another SY-beats-'em-all record breaker-- Kim Gordon's first appearance in the song coupled with the saddest and most beautiful guitar line ever written makes for one of my favorite moments in rock music. "Hot Wire My Heart" still feels like a bit of a misstep to me, but I've grown to like it, mainly as an intermission for the extreme awesomenist nature of the closing tracks. "Pacific Coast Highway" is one of Kim Gordon's best songs. And "Master-Dik" is an absolutely perfect Whitey-esque closer.

Cory: Depending on what day I'm asked, this is quite frequently my favorite SY record. "Schizophrenia"—pure magic. "Catholic Block" is so magically punk, angry, and simply (no pun intended) sonic that it's beyond comparison. "White Cross?" Pacific Coast Highway?" Wow. This record simply culminates so much that the band was hinting at up until this point and it's done with such precision.

Daron: Sister is really great. Most of the songs are totally amazing. Really only "Hot Wire My Heart" doesn't live up to the rest, and there is one part of another song that is a little weak, but besides that it is a nearly perfect album.

Ned: There's not much to say about Sister. "Schizophrenia" is probably the best all around song Sonic Youth ever recorded, and amazingly the rest of the album manages to keep pace.

Spencer: Daniel and I have a lot of differing viewpoints on SY, though not about the Whitey Album. I love this record. It's their second best. It starts kicking out the experimental trance rock fuck-up tape-manipulation punk jams and never quits, and I mean never—the first track's still looping through your head even during that brilliant two minutes of silence in the second track. "Into the Groovey" is one of the best covers ever made. "Addicted to Love" is THE best ever made.

Cory: Well, this is the record that's always neck and neck with Sister for my all-time favorite. Whereas almost all of Sister is perfect, this entire album is without flaw. "Teen Age Riot" and "Silver Rocket" start the record off with a blast of raw, pure power mixed with a little pop sweetness. Being able to hum and such crazy guitar work is the proof of everything. "'Cross the Breeze?" Great. "Candle" always kills me.

Ned: I don't pretend to be unique in my love of Sonic Youth, and I'll readily admit that Daydream Nation is my favorite of their albums. It's almost a foregone point. I agree with the statement that's already been made that it was likely the best album of the 80's — in fact I'm tempted to say it's possibly the best rock and roll album ever. Anyway, if I were forced to pick my personal favorite albums of all time, this would be pretty likely to top the list.

Cory: A change in labels without a complete change in philosophy. Sure, there's a little more "pop" and "rock" songwriting than before, but it still works. I've always been a huge fan of Lee's songs (I simply think that he offers something much different than Thurston or Kim), and "Mote" is probably my favorite Lee song. dirty boots and tunic are great as well. I think this one is overlooked at times in the grand scheme of the band's canon.

While Chuck D is great, his appearance on "Kool Thing" is one of the album's main downsides. I also think "Scooter and Jinx" sucks.

Gil: It's marginally better in the context of Richard Kern's "Film."

Ned: I remember reading an interview with Thurston Moore shortly after Daydream Nation was released. He was asked what the band would do next, and he responded (paraphrasing) "I'm not sure what our next album will sound like, but I can say it's not going to have any rhythms, any melodies, and it's going to blow your fucking mind." And then they released Goo. I have to wonder if the band hadn't smelled the lure of major labels, radio airplay, mass acceptance, and money, we might not have been able to skip their entire, sometimes painful, early 90s period and have gone directly from Daydream Nation to SYR1. Still, as disappointing as Goo was after Daydream Nation, it wasn't a bad album. I mean, it was at least five or six times better than, say, Nevermind.

Phil I have to admit that I'm a little biased towards Goo, as it was my first exposure to Sonic Youth. The first time I heard the opening to "Dirty Boots" stands as a monumental moment in my memory. I believe this record receives a lot of unjust disdain as the "major label debut," but then any follow-up to Daydream Nation stands to receive a critical beatdown due to lofty expectations. I have to agree with Cory that the Chuck D commentary could be excluded, but the songs themselves are among my favorites in the catalog. "Disappearer" and "Titanium Exposi" are both classics with fierce, tempo-changing bridges, while "Mote" will probably always be the benchmark by which I measure all Lee songs (which isn't fair, I know). "My Friend Goo" and "Scooter + Jinx" might be nominal fare, but their brief presence helps ease the transitions from one longer track to the next.

I think my appreciation for Goo came full-circle after hearing the Goo demos CD, which provides the missing link between the Daydream-Nation-era sound and the "produced" aesthetic with which so many people seem to have reservations. In their skeletal form, the raw recordings seem stronger and more spontaneous before subsequent overdubs and mixing took their toll. "Mildred Pierce" sounds substantially different as an 8-minute epic than a 90-second burst. As the songs were polished in the studio, that patina of intensity might have been slowly wiped away in favor of a "cleaner" sound, but the strength still remains. At least to these ears. But then again, we're talking about the Goo album, not the Goo demos.

To sum it all up, it goes near the top of the SY list for me.

Cory: I never have and still really don't like this record. "100%" is fun, and always has been, and "Theresa's Sound-World" is pretty super, but there's a lot of crap on this album. As Jim already pointed out, the Butch Vig connection doesn't make things too much better, and it definitely colors the album's sound. Maybe it was different and a little better than a lot of the "alternative" and "grunge" music out at the time, but I just don't think it's that exciting. I don't write it off entirely or think it's their worst, but is miles away from what they can do.

Ned: Like Goo, but better.

Daron: I don't really like the production of this album...it just seems way too clean. I am not really a fan of "Drunken Butterfly" and "Swimsuit Issue" because of how high it is mixed compared to the music). The guy who mixed Dirty is mostly to blame in my opinion... he also ruined a great Nirvana record by using his "skills." But, Kim's "Shoot" isn't bad, and her "JC" is AMAZING! "Teresa's Sound World" is another stand out... as well as a few others. Still good, but not as good as Goo overall in my opinion... mostly because of the awful mixing probably.

Aw, I'm just messin'. No I'm not. A Sonic Youth + eYe collaboration EP could not be anything less than an awesome bomb with a short, glorious fuse. "No 2 Pts. 1-4" is simultaneously Sonic Youth's most awful and most amazing collection of songs ever made, and eYe is the only person who could make that possible. NOOOOOOO!!!!

Jim: I think most people would agree with you, Cory, however I really do like Experimental Jet Set. There's a combination of things that makes this different from all the other Sonic Youth albums. The vocals are so high in the mix (Vig part II), and the music — especially by Sonic Youth standards — is stripped-down and understated. The sound comes off airily tribal. I've always taken this album as, partially, an attempt by the Youth to become more like the Boredoms, which isn't entirely a bad concept. I really like the two "singles," "Bull in the Heather" and "Androgynous Mind," but also songs like "Bone" and "... Bourgeois Reader" are great. There's a weird collision here, Vig's rock production and the band's stripped down art noise. Weird, but for me at least, great. Perhaps my favorite of the first four DGC records.

Ned: I don't listen to Experimental... that much, but I do like it. In a lot of ways I think it's a better, more true Sonic Youth album than Goo or Dirty. You say the airy/tribal sound makes you think they're trying to sound like the boredoms, but when I first heard it I thought they were trying to sound like their first EP (that you disliked). Ever since then, I think a lot of what they've done has been sparser, but more enunciated, like you can really hear and understand the musical nuances better, and that (I don't think coincidentally) is what I like so much about the first EP as well.

Daron: Experimental Jet Set starts off better than I remember it, but it has more songs on it that I don't connect with than any other SY record. However, it is still a really good record because of the super great songs on it (like Kim's "Sweet Shine" which is of the best Sonic Youth songs).

Spencer: I really disagree here. I think the albums finest moments are in its so called "filler." "The Diamond Sea" is fairly interesting, but when I put Washing Machine on, half the time I want to stop it before it even starts. "Becuz" is a great Kim Gordon tune and a great opener, and I really think the whole thing has an interesting alien quality that Experimental Jet Set kind of fails at capturing. It's a pretty unique Sonic Youth album to me. I dig it.

Anthony: I really like Washing Machine. I think some of it treads too much on the "grunge" path they were taking on Dirty and Experimental Jet Set (not that those are bad albums, by any means), and that Kim's tracks are just awful (like, remember in the title track, where she's all like, "and then there was a lady in the sky, and she said, 'hey, here's a quarter... put it in a Washing Machine'"... gah), but "Skip Tracer" is up there with my favourite Sonic Youth songs and "The Diamond Sea" is a nice closer.

Daron: I have noticed a fairly large sense of an anti-Kim mentality among some of you other writers, and this makes me a little sad. I'll be honest, I have been known to be frustrated with Kim's delivery style on certain songs throughout Sonic Youth's "career", but some of the best Sonic Youth songs are easily Kim's. I think it is easy to forgive "Goo" and other songs like it, when you have SO many awesome songs that she has made SOOO great.

Cory: So much better than Experimental Jet Set. "The Diamond Sea" is one of those songs where I can completely immerse myself and forget anything else in the world is going on. In my opinion this one song rejuvenated and changed the direction of the band's career, moving them more towards some of the free sounds that they revel in now. For that point alone I have to praise this record. The other songs aren't shabby either.

Daniel: When I first got this EP, I hated it. I couldn't get my head around the new sounds they were making. I put it away for a few months, came back to it, and loved it. The last track is pretty harsh, but they've recorded worse. I think in the end I prefer SYR3 over this, but this is still exciting music that did indeed herald a new era for the band.

Spencer: I remember listening to this EP and thinking to myself, "One day, I'd like to make music that makes me feel this way." That was the one and only time I've ever played it. I should go back to it, because I really felt as if there was something magical and interesting going on. I also think it marks the start of a certain good feeling on their records—granted, I hate A Thousand Leaves, and NYC Ghosts & Flowers isn't my favorite either, but I think what makes this and SYR 4 and Murray Street different (as well as the good parts of those other two) is an almost physical experience of a band playing together in a room, listening to each other as intently as possible.

Anthony: Anyway, SYR1 is one of my favourite Sonic Youth releases, if only for the fact that "Anagrama" is, in my opinion, the best thing the band has ever recorded, and one of my favourite improvised pieces. I think that "Tremens" is great, while "Improvisation Ajoutee" is kind of ho-hum. I agree with Jim, though: the last track is annoying as fuck and just pure ear punishment. But, definitely worth the somewhat steep price, if only for "Anagrama".

Spencer: I know I already talked about this, but now I may address the last track—awesome. I love noise music, most of the time. It's a perfect closer, and it changes enough to stay interesting. Obviously this is just me, but once again, I'm willing to take the stand.

Cory: I really enjoy all of the band's SYR EPs (not counting that piece of crap Kim Gordon one), but this one started the love affair. After a few albums where the band was starting to get a little stale for me (Dirty, Jet Set), Washing Machine came along. While it wasn't the greatest album ever heard by the world, it was pretty good. And then there was "The Diamond Sea"—pure audio magic. For these EPs to be the first real exposure after that album, they were flawless. "Anagrama" is fucking perfect. PERFECT. Nine minutes of magical sounds. While the rest of this disc isn't on that same level, it's so much different than where the band was operating before this point. Good changes indeed.

Ned: I think the SYR series was a great idea. Not only do I love the music, but it was a welcome deconstruction of the album process. The "sessions" approach allowed the band to be more prolific and creative without really creating much career risk. It was well understood that these were artistic snapshots of a musical moment rather than a well thought out and orchestrated business venture. They were designed to present music to people interested in music, and didn't really require any kind of marketing push or investment other than the cost of just getting together, recording, and then pressing the result. As a result the music has a free, liberated feeling that has been absent from their recorded output since at least Sister, and probably its fairer to say since Bad Moon Rising. SYR1 is my personal favorite, I love every moment of it. "Anagrama" is obviously very beautiful, but all four tracks are fantastic, including that last one.

Daron: I love Silver Session. Really beautiful and really soothing and relaxing in an odd way. I think it is a really great release.

Jim: I agree with Daron. Actually, I would go so far as to say that if someone made me put a SYR release on, I would put on the Silver Session. It is all feedback, but there is something so natural about it—something I can't say about much of the other SYR releases.

Anthony: Are you kidding? You don't find Anagrama sounds natural/has a natural feeling to it?

Jim: Song or EP, Anthony? If you mean song, you may have a point, but as an EP's-worth of music—a body of music—Silver Session is more succinct, more natural, and more cleanly expressed. I really do prefer it.

Anthony: Sorry, I should have clarified. I meant the song itself. But still, I think "Anagrama"/"Improvisation Ajoutee"/"Tremens" has a really natural, burnt out late night vibe to it. I kind of wish they'd only made the EP three songs, though.

Phil Definitely one of my favorite pieces for reasons that others have already noted. Although the original feedback session is chopped into digestible bits, there is an unmistakable flow through the tracks, giving it the constant feel of being just a small portion of a larger entity (what I wouldn't give to hear the entire ear-splitting session unabridged). The machines make all the noise, and the machines feed off of that noise to create even more machine noise. The purity of its creation probably creates a more mythic association in my mind (i.e. minimal human intervention, just wires and circuits doing what they're made to do). I've heard plenty of feedback in my life, but rarely can noise be as soothing as the tones emanating from the Silver Sessions disc.

Spencer: How about a cerebral sonic attack to your face? Ohh!

Man, I really don't like A Thousand Leaves, and I don't even know why, maybe. The only song I even remember is "Wildflower Soul." The rest of the album made me anxious to jump up and down or something. And I tend to think I can appreciate the subtle and cerebral; I don't own John Cage records just to get my groove on. I don't mean to bag on the fans of this record, it just doesn't do it for me. Some of it made me feel dead.

Anthony: A Thousand Leaves is unfairly dismissed within the Sonic Youth canon. Although it doesn't hold nearly as much sentimental meaning for me as, say, Dirty (first Sonic Youth album I bought and what sort of got me started into indie rock in general), I think its probably their best proper album of the 90s. "Hits of Sunshine" is just incredible, as is "Sunday" and Lee's songs... and the whole thing has this spooky atmospheric vibe that really gives it a striking autumnal feel. Good for late night listening, you know? Anyway...

Cory: I know there's a little bit of a mixed opinion on this record out there, but I think it is the band's most solid top-to-bottom exercise since Daydream Nation. There are a lot of songs on here that work and work well for me, despite the fact that a lot of those tracks are not a strong as they appeared in instrumental form on the first 2 SYR EPs. "Sunday" is one of the band's best pop songs, period. "Hoarfrost" and "Karen Koltrane" are two great Lee songs. "Hits of Sunshine" was fun when I first got the record, but it impresses me less today.

Overall strength ignored, remove the first and last tracks and this record is a better statement.

Daron: A Thousand Leaves was the first record of theirs that I bought after my souring on Sonic Youth that I really felt they were truly back. I am sure that sounds really lame since they were always doing what they wanted... and like I said, in retrospect I think all of those records from Goo through Washing Machine are all really really good... Anyway, I guess what I mean to say is that I felt at home listening to A Thousand Leaves and that we were on the same wavelength again.

Jim: As not really a "fan" of any of the artists they decided to cover, I can't listen to this EP, and I don't care if it outs me as poseur for admitting it. Coco covering Yoko? This was a joke release, right?

Daniel: Well, I don't like Yoko, per se, but the rest of the stuff is amazing. How can you call the John Cage pieces or Pendulum Music a joke? It's serious music, and they were performing it seriously, and it comes across well, I think.

Spencer: As for SYR 4, clocking in at about 100 minutes (longest EP ever, eh?), I think it's a stroke of boldness, a perfectly-timed homage to the people and ideas who got them started. SYR 4 asks, "Where would Sonic Youth be today without Fluxus (George Maciunas and Yoko Ono)? John Cage? other artists calling for the simultaneous destruction and re-animation of tradition and convention in modern music?" Vibrantly creative realizations and revisions of classic and new works for visual and verbal scores. William Winant and Jim O'Rourke are essential additions. A nearly flawless experiment, which, when you realize who Sonic Youth actually are, isn't an experiment at all.

Cory: I am in complete love with this disc. There are a few complete throwaway points ("Voice Piece for Soprano," "Pendulum Music," "Carpenter's Piece"), but that's why you can skip tracks on CDs. The tracks that really work are mind-numbing. James Tenney's "Having Never Written a Note for Percussion" slayed me upon first play and it still gives me chills. Perhaps it is the expanded lineup. Perhaps there was something in the water. I don't care; I'm all for it. Cage's "Four-Six" has to be considered one of the damned coolest things the band has ever recorded as well. I don't find this record pretentious at all, and I don't see why people would. To me there's a lot to like here.

Spencer: In my Sonic Youth dictionary, if you look up ambivalence, you get the definition: NYC Ghosts & Flowers. Renaldo's title track is a classic. The rest? I'm ambivalent to the point of almost complete indifference. I feel like I'm in the minority of minorities with this opinion, but that's never stopped me before. Although that line sucks. And she sings it over and over.

Cory: I'll throw my two cents into the whole "this album isn't as bad as some people seem to think it is" camp. To me, I can see the venom for a track like "Lightnin'." Besides that, I think the record is pretty good—much better than Jet Set or Dirty in my opinion. It's simply much more mature than those other records. Maybe I'm just a bigger fan of this sort of sound. Oh yeah, the title track is magical live. And Pitchfork's 0 rating out of 10 can kiss my ass too.

Daron: I have said this a lot, so it probably shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but I love NYC Ghosts & Flowers. I think it is a total return to form to the early days. I love it. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't totally love it. It isn't as good as Evol or Sister or Daydream probably, but besides that, it totally ranks up there.

Tom: Unsubscribe.

Adam: NYC Ghosts & Flowers, I think, is a troubled work in that the band had some good ideas, but after the sort of bare bones feel of A Thousand Leaves, they went a little too overboard and ended up with an album that feels forced in a lot of ways.