#90
March 1985
Sonic Youth
Bad Moon Rising
2.25 out of 5
Highlights:
Death Valley ’69 (with Lydia Lunch)
I’ve been dreading this one.
I didn’t enjoy it during the Sonic Youth Listening Post of a decade ago. And I know that SY gets a whole lot better after this. Here’s what I wrote in 08:
“There is nothing to review here. It's more ambient than the former record. But, it's sooooo obsessed with being "haunting" that it has no soul. It almost feels like a record by The Velvet Underground, if they were all dropped acid, forgot how to play, dropped the tuning on their instruments, ate a lot of turkey, fell asleep, took a crap and then woke up to see what they recorded and though, "Oooh, no one's done anything like this since.....since...Duck Stab!
There is a song called "Satan is Boring". And that sort of sums up the whole record for me.
I hate this. I never want to hear it again. I can't wait to delete it from my computer.
Hold on a sec.
There. Done.
Not even backed up.”
This time…I’m a little more focused and a lot less resistant to this music. (I think I wanted to hate it at the time)
But, boy, it really challenges.
After the “Intro” it moves into “Brave Men Run (In My Family)” and that really really sounds like no one was in charge. Just a bunch of noisemakers in a studio with a lot of time and no one telling them…”umm…hey, guys? This is awful.”
But, as I have said before, I find it weirdly easy to read and write and do other things to Sonic Youth. It was 5 minutes in to “I Love Her All the Time” before I realized we had moved on to another song. (I was reading about yet another Mets loss)
So, I guess that’s something.
It was right around the middle of “Ghost Bitch” that I wanted to be done with this. And then I wondered what it might sound like live. And then I realized that it was happening when I was in college and there were a lot of people doing weird shit like this and it was fun for five minutes at the Pyramid Club or someplace but then I’d just go home with a headache.
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