It is a true testament to the decency of my college roommate during the 1988-1989 school year that he never burned my Sonic Youth Sister album, which I played fairly nonstop for over a year and which he so clearly hated.
I first heard of Sonic Youth’s Sister in a tiny blurb near the back end of a Rolling Stone Magazine year in review feature; a friend of mine eventually picked up Sister on cassette, which I promptly borrowed. I checked it out. I didn’t love it, actually. Not at first. It seemed kind of like an update on the Velvet Underground, with more screeching guitar.
But over the summer of 1988, the inadequacy of my first exposure to the album kept bugging me, like an annoying itch that taunts you when your mind isn’t otherwise occupied. I bought the album myself to listen to it more thoroughly.
And this time, it blew me away—a genuine paradigm-change album for me. There was guitar noise, of course, and plenty of it—dissonance, abrasion, nearly unlistenable squeals and shrieks and vacuum-cleaner whines and hurricane squalls of it. And beyond the noise there were three vocalists, one of them a female with some of the best moments of the album. The lyrics were suitably counter-culture for my tastes, with tales of schizophrenic siblings and sexual repression and oddly seductive murmurings about beauty.
The strange guitar tunings threw my ear off at first, too, but somehow once it all clicked for me, it flipped my aesthetics. I couldn’t listen to anything else the same way. (I gave up listening to classic rock for years—seriously.) By the time Daydream Nation was released in October of 1988, I’d picked up all their prior studio albums, and I continued to diligently pick up their recent releases until the band’s unfortunate demise.
Here’s a deservedly deep dive into perhaps the most significant (probably more heard-of than heard) rock band of its time.
But there are tons of playlists here. So where to start?
- Mainstream radio, classic rock, and pop music listeners should probably start with Sonic Youth’s more palatable, later work sampled on Playlist 7.
- Alt-rock listeners accustomed to abrasive sounds should delve more thoroughly into their peak work; Playlists 2, 3, and 6 best represent the three major modes of Sonic Youth.
- Playlist 4 rocks pretty awesomely, as well; it might be the best next stop for mainstream and alt-rock listeners alike.
Playlist 1: No Wave / Noise Rock Beginnings
Guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, bass guitarist Kim Gordon, and rotating series of drummers (until Steve Shelley arrived for good) got their start in the New York City no wave scene, where Avante Garde noise was king and experimentation was the norm. Playlist One gives a gritty taste of their early work.
Playlist 2: Art-Punk Brilliance
EVOL (1986) marked a huge step forward for the band, with more attention to song structure and form, making their dissonant noise more approachable. Sister represented the pinnacle of their art-punk aesthetic—short, hard, ragged yet complex songs that burst forth to simultaneously assail and beguile your sensibilities. Daydream Nation may have been the album that heralded Sonic Youth’s greatness, but Sister is the one that earned them the cred to pull it off. Playlist Two begins and ends with almost all of Sister, with much of EVOL sandwiched in between.
Playlist 3: Dissonant Guitar-Orchestra Epics
After reaching a certain peak with Sister (and graduating to a bigger budget and better recording studio), Sonic Youth needed to change. For Daydream Nation, they expanded their sound and stretched out their songs, letting them shift and morph as they progressed. The fuller production and extended length gave the songs the feel (to me, at least) of an oddly tuned guitar orchestra. Playlist Three presents a one-hour condensation of the original double-LP.
Playlist 4: Mastery and Consolidation of the Form
A jump to a major label brought even better production and more solid song forms—yet the music retained its edge. Sonic Youth found themselves near the forefront (artistically, if not according to sales figures) of the alternative rock movement for which they’d helped lay the groundwork for years. Goo (1990) was a minor hit, and the excellent Dirty (1992) represents the pinnacle of their (somewhat) accessible alt-rock period. (The hit single from Dirty was one of the worst songs on the album.) Both albums are chronicled on Playlist Four.
Playlists 5 and 6: Toward a Blissful Ambience
The band pivoted once again, shifting toward quieter textures and washes of noise, which often played out over extended song lengths. With spaced-out, buzzing songs that drift and shimmer in and out of the listener’s consciousness, Washing Machine (1995) saw Sonic Youth reach yet another peak. (If I had to choose only three albums to represent Sonic Youth, I’d choose Sister, Daydream Nation, and Washing Machine.) Playlists Five and Six show Sonic Youth stretching out toward a blissful ambience. There’s something about a good droning buzz of Sonic Youth guitar that rushes through me like endorphins.
Playlist 7: Mature Synthesis
Sonic Youth’s 2000s work mostly explores the range of their previous output, with songs that are marginally easier on the eardrums than much of their previous work. Playlist Seven is a blend of their later albums. The last two songs in particular just slay me.
The band broke up after Moore and Gordon, married since 1984, divorced. (Thurston, how could you?)
More Sonic Youth
I have a planned playlist of other odds and ends—a couple covers, some Ciccone Youth, some assorted experiments—but maybe that’s overkill. Casual listeners are probably overwhelmed already by the seven playlists above, and diehard fans probably already know it all, anyway. Don’t hold your breath for it—I’ll post it when I get around to it, whenever that may be.
Cover Art:
- Sister and Daydream Nation (gatefold inner sleeve): Source, Discogs.com, Fair use.
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