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Sonic youth superstar album11/27/2023 In all of its cacophony and chaos, Washing Machine seems to find a musical order making it more palpable to anyone not born in the times of 80s underground rage. However, Becuz is the first song that I might find myself returning to in the future, as I did enjoy the shifts of dynamic and the fuzzy distortion of the lead guitar over the driving rhythm riff. Especially when outfits like Porridge Radio show us how you can get pretty damn punk and still have emotional power in your voice. The punky coldness is, of course, what she is going for, but when you are used to the emotive vocals of Janis Joplin or David Byrne, it is hard to get won over by the screams of the singer. Yet, I guess one of the main problems I have with the Sonic Youth, as it has become apparent over the past few days, are the vocals by Kim Gordon. The grungy guitar riffs hit the right note of unpolished and gritty without drifting off into complete noise (but balancing on the brink of it). Washing Machine starts on the promising Becuz. The entire 2002 record moves between alternative rock, progressive experimentation, and hard rock – listenable but not memorable. Murray Street’s opening track is basic alternative rock until it turns into strange experimentation of screeches, I am not able to listen to. Tracks like Poison Arrow or Antenna are easy to listen to but not memorable. As for the other tracks on the record, they have been a more endurable challenge to listen to than very early LPs, but are overshadowed by other bands who move in the alternative and indie rock circles today – which is apparently the audience that the Sonic Youth is attempting to penetrate now. But it fails to stick the landing and, instead, sounds like forced attempt to be punchy and provocative. And so, it is on tracks like Ani-Orgasm, which desperately tries to hang on to the hard-core punk vibes the band resonated earlier without effort. But as it often happens when a band, with a certain reputation, ages and gets further away from the youthful success of the earlier days, trying to keep up with the past can sound torturous. Here, the noisy cacophony has faded into the background a little, making the album more approachable. So, when the time came, I gave the latest Sonic Youth record, The Eternal, a spin. It is kind of like looking at a piece of modern art trying hard to grasp the meaning of it, but somehow a bunch of screwdrivers arranged to a triangle do not make a lot of sense and are not particularly interesting (I’m referring to a real-life experience here).Īfter failing to get into the band’s earlier no-wave records, which to me sound more like a random recording of noises coming out of instruments the way they never should, I decided to approach things a little differently. The albums sound like they were recorded in an outburst manner of experimentation and maybe require a special state of mind to be listened to. However, the percussive influences of Richard Edson on the debut and the funky bassline kicking off The Good and The Bad, are more engaging but quickly disappear into sonic chaos. With primitive and random instrumentation, the albums sound like they were recorded in a kind of drug-induced haze – and maybe need exactly that to be an enjoyable listening experience. The minimal tonal range and repetitiveness throughout the band’s self-titled recording and the studio album Confusion is Sex, are not up my alley. Okay, the early no-wave stuff reminds me of the time when I was preparing for my SWANS interview.
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