I came to Sonic Youth all of the wrong ways. It's almost embarrassing how long it took me to grasp it. In college I was a big fan of Pearl Jam, so much so in fact, I embarked on a 13 date tour with the band with my roommate (at the time and for the next 8 years), Casey. I worked all summer to pay for the trip, mowing, working for my dad, even painting a friend's house to have just enough money to go. We started in North Carolina and made our way down the coast all the way to West Palm Beach, eventually over to New Orleans, and back up to Indiana. We felt fortunate that this tour was even happening, as a tragic incident that summer at Roskilde, left Pearl Jam threatening to never tour again.
Opening for the band for each of these dates was Sonic Youth. I knew that they were a hallmark band of the 80's and 90's and that Eddie Vedder loved them. Back then, that was enough to pique my interest in a band, but I pegged it as something weird that I probably just wouldn't understand. Casey was more into that scene at the time, and informed me that they had just taken on a new member and that their sound was noisier than ever. We went to a side show that they did in Chapel Hill, that was in a tiny, dingy club, just in the hopes that EV would show up. It was a weird, noisy experience with projectors, static, and people with Pearl Jam shirts or skinny jeans everywhere. I ended up picking up their subsequent album after the tour (after seeing a band 13 times, no matter how noisy you think they are, it does start to register), Murray Street, and some of the songs like “Empty Page” and "Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style” settled deep into my psyche, but still, I never considered myself a fan of the band.
Sonic Youth-Empty Page:
Soon after this, Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot came out, and revolutionized my sonic senses. I had no idea at the time, but that new guy from Sonic Youth was Jim O'Rourke, who Wilco brought on to put the finishing touches on the album (a.k.a. "ruin" it). O'Rourke became a full time member of Sonic Youth for albums Murray Street and Sonic Nurse as well as to produce Wilco's follow up a ghost is born. As he vacillated between these bands, his influence on both became more evident.
Murray Street and ghost... are sister albums, two bands stripped down (SY of their gear, victims of theft; Wilco having lost 3 members in a year and a half) creating albums full of noise, 70's grooves and interlacing guitar crescendos. The noise freak-out at the end of SY's "Karen Revisited" is not far from Wilco's 15 minutes of feedback that conclude "Less than you Think" (that breakdown in "Karen Revisited" could also be described as the birth of modern day Animal Collective, with Panda, Avey, and Geologist emerging from the rubble of jagged guitar feedback). Fittingly, SY released Sonic Nurse just two weeks before a ghost is born, further showing O'Rourke was in the thick with both of these bands at this time. This was a golden era for not only Sonic Youth and Wilco, each at their own creative apexes, but also for O'Rourke.
I have been running to this entire album a lot lately. As previously mentioned, it's a great one to get lost to in the depth of a January Chicago winter. There will be times where you get lost in the nuances and/or the noise, but it always seems to reel you back in with an amazing hook on a climax that you may not have seen coming. Top running tracks include: "Disconnection Notice" (it starts slow, but a 2 minute building bridge takes care of that to carry you into the stratosphere), "Rain on Tin," (another one with an epic bridge that will call to mind Wilco's "Impossible Germany" with it's Television-like guitar synchronicity). You may get lost in the 11+ of "Karen Revisited" as the noise takes you to a far away, perhaps disconcerting place, but you will not regret waiting it out for "Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style" (a steady builder that yearning to burst apart, finally succeeds by ascending into noise suitable for the climax of any run).
Sonic Youth-Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style:
For another taste of these artists check out the Tweedy/O'Rourke/Kotche (Wilco's drummer) collaboration Loose Fur, who also released a self titled avant rock album in 2003.
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