Why - Carly Simon (1982)

maybe it's just lust, but whatever. this blog needs an update.



listen.

Sonic Youth

I need to say something about Sonic Youth, anything. It's hard to be at all concise about a band this great, but let me try.

First, they are the greatest band in the universe. They join The Beatles, who've mastered pop, Pavement, who've mastered their own style of suburban pop, the Stones, who've mastered rock (and its ego), and certainly others you can come up with, bands which never disappoint, which always do something new but discernible.

Second, in a 30 year existence, there is no weak album. Some I admit I haven't fully "gotten" yet, but it's obvious the potential is there. I've heard the usual love-of-dichotomy "SY is split on a continuum between artsy noise and hard-rock songs," but there is so much more than that. There is always ambience, and there is always some kind of melody. The rhythms are pronounced (sometimes the rhythms are the melodies), and there's almost always some kind of "noise," an all-encompassing term if ever there was one.


Mostly what I would like is for others to notice how fucking amazing this band can be, a hard task, admittedly. Their discography is huge, and ambient noise isn't always the easiest thing to notice, even if sometimes the songs are clearly in the pop form or the melodies are highly pronounced (Teenage Riot, anyone?) And while every album is indeed unique, at distant listens they all sound the same. And consider that every critic and fan out there has their own opinions about which is the best album. How diverse is their discography?

2000's NYC Ghosts & Flowers is pure ambient, while 1992's Dirty is a Butch Vig-produced noise/grunge fest (they're both wonderful). Their first 1982 album is no-wave. Their second, 1983, is ambient noise rock (check out the Stooges cover and the lyrics to Confusion is Next). 1988's Daydream Nation is about as catchy as they can get, while 1998's A Thousand Leaves is about as laid-back as they can get. I could go on. I used to think Thousand Leaves was my favorite, but really it's just my first vinyl fetish and the first SY that I truly got into, opening up this wonderful world. I could always go for parts of Washing Machine, Confusion is Next, Dirty, and of course, shuffling through the entire discography.


And so to close, if there is any doubt about the ever-constant strength of this band, listen to a song from each album:

1982 S/T: I Dreamed I Dream
1983 Confusion is Next: Freezer Burn/I Wanna Be Your Dog
1985 Bad Moon Rising: Death Valley '69
1986 EVOL: Shadow of a Doubt
1987 Sister: Schizophrenia
1988 Daydream Nation: Teenage Riot
1990 Goo: Kool Thing
1992 Dirty: JC
1994 Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star: Sweet Shine
1995 Washing Machine: Little Trouble Girl (or Unwind...)
1998 A Thousand Leaves: Snare, Girl
2000 NYC Ghosts & Flowers: Nevermind (What Was It Anyway)
2002 Murray Street: Sympathy for Strawberry
2004 Sonic Nurse: I Love You Golden Blue
2006 Rather Ripped: Jams Run Free
2009 The Eternal: Massage the History

We Tigers - Animal Collective (2004)

my favorite song off of Sung Tongs and one of the most memorable Animal Collective songs ever!

prepare to dance!
prepare to jump!
prepare to scream!
prepare to sing!

prepare to dance!

listen.

The Message - Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five (1982)

the person that first played this track for me introduced it by saying something along the lines of "hey guys, hip hop and rap isn't all about 40s and blunts."

now, i'm not one to talk down 40s and blunts, but let me just say that the era of rapping solely about 40s and blunts wouldn't even come until the early 90s, a decade after Grandmaster Flash got his message out.



while most rap tracks rarely exceed 5min in length (notably, 2Pac's "California Love" goes for 6.5 min), "The Message" hits seven minutes and twelve seconds, an epic for the genre.

but the length is necessary.

the beat is so tight that everyone wants to rap over it: Ice Cube, Puff Daddy...
the lyrics are so fucking brutal that everyone wants to repeat them: Andre Nickatina, Snoop Dogg, Immortal Technique...

and the message?

the message is the Message: it's about how fucked up life is in the ghetto, it's about frustration, and you feel it:

don't
push
me
cause
i'm
close
to
the
edge

i'm
try
ing
not
to
lose
my
head

it's like a jungle sometimes. it makes me wonder how i keep from going under.

such a fucking badass.

Codeine - Castle (1990)

I apologize for the youtube video. This is all I could find.

Yesterday night, for some reason I decided to youtube "Codeine". The only song that attracted my attention was a song that I knew about a few months ago which they wrote for a 6 x 7" box compilation set called "Endangered Species".

I'm pretty sure this is hard to find, which is why it took me so long to realize this song even existed.

As all Codeine songs, they're hard, but soft yet somewhat noisy and slow hence the genre I feel they pioneered, "slowcore".

It starts off with a couple of riffs that makes you think you're about to listen to a badass upbeat rockin' song, but all of a sudden the crashing drums with a dragging bass and feedback from the guitar comes in and it transforms into a sluggish song. The nasally voice of Stephen Immerwhr comes in with the lyrics.

Lyrics (excerpt):

There's a castle in her heart
The walls go up for miles

There's a tower
You can see everything
But she shows you nothing

Every time I hear this song I think of Beni Bischof's Castle series.

Particularly this picture:

If you listen to the lyrics and look at the photo; it fits perfectly.

So simple.

This castle. No bridges. No windows. No light inside. Just a massive brick building in the middle of nowhere.

It leaves you empty.

"But she shows you nothing".

Expressway to Yr. Skull - Sonic Youth (1986)

the other night i was hanging out at a friend's apartment on mission doing one of my favorite things to do past midnight: getting stoned and listening to rock & roll. most of the guys there listen to really solid stuff and, considering how baked i was, most records they'd throw on on any given day would make me lean back, close my eyes, and cry rainbows of happiness in my mind at the bliss pounding my face from tower speakers.

this particular night, we were listening to Sonic Youth's third studio album, Evol, while a couple guys played some awesome zombie-killing video game on the tv. i was definitely feeling the album as a whole (and definitely downloaded it right after i went home), but it wasn't until the last track that i melted.

right as "Expressway to Yr. Skull" began, i reached down next to the speaker and picked up the record to check out the album art. then i pulled out a sleeve, looking for the lyrics for the particular song we were on.



sorry i couldn't find a better-quality version, but this will suffice. the song is listed here at the bottom under the alternate name "The Crucifixion of Sean Penn." actually i don't know what the official name is. whatever, it doesn't matter.

like i said, i was searching across the sleeves for the lyrics of the current song. "we're gonna kill the california girls." what the hell? "we're gonna find the meaning of feeling good and we're gonna stay there as long as we think we should." hell yes! i found it!

and right at that moment of Eureka! Thurston Moore cries out "Mystery Train....." at the same moment a sliding guitar sound flies overhead. then comes "Three way Plane....." with the same guitar swooping over me. before i could even gather my thoughts, the last line comes, "Expresswayyyyyyyyyyyy ... to yr. skull!"

i found the meaning of feeling good in three short lines.

Mystery Train
Three-way Plane
Expressway to yr. skull

before you even have the time to settle into that "chorus," though, the band slams into high-gear as if they are entering a long drawn-out jam. you soon doubt this expectation, as the guitars wail solemnly in the background begging for some space to breathe, the drums come crashing down, and the song calms down. you wait for some words. you beg for the mystery train to come pick you up.

but it never comes. the song spends half of its seven building up, only to spend the second half winding down, into a pristine tapering off of noise rock that's anything but noisy.

listen (last.fm has a live version available)