Shadow of a doubt lyrics sonic youth2/13/2024 The song’s also an excellent showcase of Shelley’s percussive talent, giving the band a sort of vitality that feels much needed after Bad Moon Rising. Imagine what Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures might sound like if all the punk trappings were stripped away, and that’s basically this song, and indeed a good deal of the rest of the record at large. “Tom Violence” is as good an opening statement as any, and provides a good idea of what Sonic Youth were about at the time they were a band who were somehow able to make listenable songs out of the weirdest, most unorthodox tuning schemes. The core of the band was always bassist and feminist icon Kim Gordon, guitarist and aspiring beat poet Lee Ranaldo, and guitarist and pretentious dickhead Thurston Moore, but until 1985 they’d been cycling through several drummers until Shelley joined, and except for the addition of Pavement bassist Mark Ibold, the lineup was stable all the way until their disbandment. Their music was steadily getting more structured with each album, however, and EVOL was only the most recent development on that front, with new drummer Steve Shelley completing the Sonic Youth lineup for the remainder of their time together. It wasn’t always so their first two albums, Confusion is Sex and Bad Moon Rising, clearly draw from New York’s no wave scene, and my thoughts on the scene are as follows: it’s either the most interesting thing to come out of New York that isn’t Broadway or Talking Heads, or it’s interesting only from an intellectual standpoint, and their first two LPs are most certainly the latter to my mind. At their best, their songwriting was among the most purposeful I’ve come across in noise rock, and I’ve yet to hear any other band that so carefully threaded the needle between atonality and melody. Sonic Youth are quite possibly the most important indie rock band whose name isn’t the Velvet Underground they’ve influenced Lord knows how many indie acts in the 90s, perhaps most famously Nirvana, and I can certainly see why. Review Summary: This album opened an expressway to my skull.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |