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Moshe · 06.13.2007, 10:45 AM

http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=56341&v=3639471811

Burning the Candle at Both Ends
Pop

BY STEVE DOLLAR
June 12, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/56341

Something spooky always animated "Daydream Nation." The cover of Sonic Youth's 1988 doublealbum — released back when the vinyl format had not fully yielded to the CD, whose 80-minute capacity made the concept obsolete — was a 1983 painting by Gerhard Richter: a single tall white candle aflame before a textured whitishgray background. The symbolism could be anything: time burning down, a transient glow amid nocturnal shadows, yet another arty reference to show off the band's cool taste.
Regardless, the image cast a spell before the music even began. And once it did, the spell would not shake. "Spirit of desire … we will fall," intones bassist Kim Gordon as the music kicks up — a song called "Teenage Riot." Guitars chime slowly, building momentum around an incantation that evokes the Stooges' 1969 song "We Will Fall." (The piece is famous for a mad viola freakout courtesy of producer John Cale, who threw down a jam to fill up the remaining 11 minutes of the "No Fun" album's running time.) After more than a minute of spectral emanation, the guitars erupt in an ecstatic tumble of overtones and driving rhythm, a suspended instant meant to send bodies flailing into the mosh pit (how quaint, you're thinking now). "Its getting kind of quiet in my city's head," guitarist Thurston Moore sings, paradoxically, amid the tumult. "Takes a teenage riot to get me out of bed right now."
Nearly 20 years later, a lifetime in pop culture, Sonic Youth is inciting the riot again — reliving a pop moment that is now legitimately ghostly. The reissue of "Daydream Nation" (as a raritiespacked double-CD edition) heralds a summer tour that finds the band playing the album's songs live, in sequence, at such events as the Pitchfork Media Festival in Chicago (pitchforkmedia.com, the alternately revered and reviled indie tastemaker, recently named "Daydream Nation" the greatest album of the 1980s) and the McCarren Park Pool in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
The album, Sonic Youth's fifth and last before signing a major-label deal with Geffen Records, marked a clear turning point for the band, a once-abstract noise act that bridged the '80s downtown art scene to the more populist precincts of the American independent rock movement: the missing link between John Cage and Black Flag. When Mr. Moore sings about hitting "the riot trail," he means it's time to get in the van and play the circuit of grimy clubs that were the outfit's natural habitat. Dig up a tattered copy of Forced Exposure, the fanzine published by Mr. Moore's friend Byron Coley, and you can read brutally funny tour diaries from the day, also documented in Michael Azerrad's 2002 indierock history "This Band Could Be Your Life."
Sonic Youth has recorded another 10 albums since "Daydream Nation," but with the exception of its 1990 follow-up "Goo" — notable for its flirtation with the pop crossover that the band's Seattle grunge protégés were about to achieve — none of them beg strongly to be revisited. Partly because the group was still underground, and partly because the record sounded like a reach, like it meant to be a statement, its textural wash of overloaded amplifiers, unconventional guitar tunings, full-throttle jamming, and inchoate lyrics has always meant something, even when it is difficult to say exactly what. In 1988, Mr. Moore left a cryptic message on my answering machine with a few verbal footnotes about the songs: "The Sprawl" was a nod to cyberpunk novelist William Gibson's future concept of the East Coast as one endless city; "The Wonder" was what another novelist, James Ellroy, called Los Angeles; "Eliminator Jr" hot-wired ZZ Top choogle to Dinosaur Jr. thrash.
Listening back, the album's pleasures abide in the gleaming cohesion of the band's aesthetic. It's the way everything meshes on "Silver Rocket," which shifts from a muscular, speedy intro to a white-noise jam session and back again, at once visceral and hallucinatory. It's the cold erotic intensity of Ms. Gordon's vocals on "Kissability," propelled by the tight, sustained pulse of Steve Shelley's drums. And it's the blatantly sexual opening to "Eliminator Jr.," in which Ms. Gordon emotes in guttural "uhh" sounds as the band jackknifes around her. Mostly, it's the ease with which the musicians master a dynamic that moves fluidly between a kind of metallic impressionism — sustained notes, spare rhythms — and multi-guitar grooves that swing and spiral.
The reissue of "Daydream Nation" offers a bonus disc, which has concert versions of the studio tracks and oddities like Sonic Youth's cover of the Beatles' "Within You, Without You." None of this is essential, though it is fun to hear, especially during the abstractions of "The Sprawl," a chiming interlude that recalls one of just-intonation composer Arnold Dreyblatt's pieces for his Orchestra of Excited Strings. It's a sign that Sonic Youth has always been more alternative than the daydream nation it helped to invent, a culture that survived the co-option of the 1990s and now thrives in the post-major label era of MySpace and file sharing. "Daydream Nation" may sound like a flashback, but its candle still burns.

06.13.2007, 10:45 AM	#6
Moshe Super Moderator Join Date: Mar 2006 Posts: 5,928	http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=56341&v=3639471811 Burning the Candle at Both Ends Pop BY STEVE DOLLAR June 12, 2007 URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/56341 Something spooky always animated "Daydream Nation." The cover of Sonic Youth's 1988 doublealbum — released back when the vinyl format had not fully yielded to the CD, whose 80-minute capacity made the concept obsolete — was a 1983 painting by Gerhard Richter: a single tall white candle aflame before a textured whitishgray background. The symbolism could be anything: time burning down, a transient glow amid nocturnal shadows, yet another arty reference to show off the band's cool taste. Regardless, the image cast a spell before the music even began. And once it did, the spell would not shake. "Spirit of desire … we will fall," intones bassist Kim Gordon as the music kicks up — a song called "Teenage Riot." Guitars chime slowly, building momentum around an incantation that evokes the Stooges' 1969 song "We Will Fall." (The piece is famous for a mad viola freakout courtesy of producer John Cale, who threw down a jam to fill up the remaining 11 minutes of the "No Fun" album's running time.) After more than a minute of spectral emanation, the guitars erupt in an ecstatic tumble of overtones and driving rhythm, a suspended instant meant to send bodies flailing into the mosh pit (how quaint, you're thinking now). "Its getting kind of quiet in my city's head," guitarist Thurston Moore sings, paradoxically, amid the tumult. "Takes a teenage riot to get me out of bed right now." Nearly 20 years later, a lifetime in pop culture, Sonic Youth is inciting the riot again — reliving a pop moment that is now legitimately ghostly. The reissue of "Daydream Nation" (as a raritiespacked double-CD edition) heralds a summer tour that finds the band playing the album's songs live, in sequence, at such events as the Pitchfork Media Festival in Chicago (pitchforkmedia.com, the alternately revered and reviled indie tastemaker, recently named "Daydream Nation" the greatest album of the 1980s) and the McCarren Park Pool in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The album, Sonic Youth's fifth and last before signing a major-label deal with Geffen Records, marked a clear turning point for the band, a once-abstract noise act that bridged the '80s downtown art scene to the more populist precincts of the American independent rock movement: the missing link between John Cage and Black Flag. When Mr. Moore sings about hitting "the riot trail," he means it's time to get in the van and play the circuit of grimy clubs that were the outfit's natural habitat. Dig up a tattered copy of Forced Exposure, the fanzine published by Mr. Moore's friend Byron Coley, and you can read brutally funny tour diaries from the day, also documented in Michael Azerrad's 2002 indierock history "This Band Could Be Your Life." Sonic Youth has recorded another 10 albums since "Daydream Nation," but with the exception of its 1990 follow-up "Goo" — notable for its flirtation with the pop crossover that the band's Seattle grunge protégés were about to achieve — none of them beg strongly to be revisited. Partly because the group was still underground, and partly because the record sounded like a reach, like it meant to be a statement, its textural wash of overloaded amplifiers, unconventional guitar tunings, full-throttle jamming, and inchoate lyrics has always meant something, even when it is difficult to say exactly what. In 1988, Mr. Moore left a cryptic message on my answering machine with a few verbal footnotes about the songs: "The Sprawl" was a nod to cyberpunk novelist William Gibson's future concept of the East Coast as one endless city; "The Wonder" was what another novelist, James Ellroy, called Los Angeles; "Eliminator Jr" hot-wired ZZ Top choogle to Dinosaur Jr. thrash. Listening back, the album's pleasures abide in the gleaming cohesion of the band's aesthetic. It's the way everything meshes on "Silver Rocket," which shifts from a muscular, speedy intro to a white-noise jam session and back again, at once visceral and hallucinatory. It's the cold erotic intensity of Ms. Gordon's vocals on "Kissability," propelled by the tight, sustained pulse of Steve Shelley's drums. And it's the blatantly sexual opening to "Eliminator Jr.," in which Ms. Gordon emotes in guttural "uhh" sounds as the band jackknifes around her. Mostly, it's the ease with which the musicians master a dynamic that moves fluidly between a kind of metallic impressionism — sustained notes, spare rhythms — and multi-guitar grooves that swing and spiral. The reissue of "Daydream Nation" offers a bonus disc, which has concert versions of the studio tracks and oddities like Sonic Youth's cover of the Beatles' "Within You, Without You." None of this is essential, though it is fun to hear, especially during the abstractions of "The Sprawl," a chiming interlude that recalls one of just-intonation composer Arnold Dreyblatt's pieces for his Orchestra of Excited Strings. It's a sign that Sonic Youth has always been more alternative than the daydream nation it helped to invent, a culture that survived the co-option of the 1990s and now thrives in the post-major label era of MySpace and file sharing. "Daydream Nation" may sound like a flashback, but its candle still burns.
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