The 1986 Listening Post - Sonic Youth- Evol

Sonic Youth - Evol

#192/1337

May 1986

Sonic Youth

Evol

Genre: Alternative

4.5 out of 5

Highlights:

Shadow of a Doubt 

Starpower 

It’s impossible for me to get my head wrapped around the idea that this is just 5 years removed from, say, Adam and the Ants’ Prince Charming. 

Stuff from the early 80s seems so trite when placed next to something as timeless and pulsating as this. 

Just 10 years before this... The Ramones were cutting edge. 

A scant 17 years before, the Velvet Underground. 

Wholly unique and scorchingly powerful, Evol stands as a line of demarcation in rock, afaic. 

Is it perfect? No. They are still finding out what works and what is just superfluous and redundant. 

However, they get damned close. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/evol/520273579

The 1985 Listening Post - Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising

Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising

#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. 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/bad-moon-rising/522275749

The 1983 Listening Post - Sonic Youth - Confusion is Sex

Sonic Youth - Confusion is Sex

From my 2009 entry on this album:
"Sonic Youth is the New Wave of waves. Lo-Fi to the point of being obnoxious, every track is strangely hypnotic. SY is the only music I have ever found myself getting lost in AND being able to read a novel while listening at the same time. Classical demands that I pay attention, Rock, jazz, etc, all call on the listener to distract themselves. You can listen to Sonic Youth and love it, or you can put it on as background music. Either way, it works. I've never heard anything like that.
Ambient to it's core, Confusion is Sex is a groundwork, a culmination of the beginnings of ideas.
Tracks like Protect Me You could be the soundtrack to a Killer Orphan Slasher Movie. In a good way. Whereas Shaking Hell ALMOST sounds like a song. But it's not, really. It's an audition to score some NYU Experimental film.
Some songs, like Confusion is Next, are actually worse than Yeast Infection's and that's saying something.
There is a lot of value here, though. Along with Laurie Anderson and Glenn Branca and others, this is what the post-New Wave art sound was sounding like in the early 80s. A great time for music, when you think about it."

I haven't changed that opinion.

2/28/1983
Sonic Youth
Confusion is Sex
3 Stars

Best Tracks:
She's in a Bad Mood
Making the Nature Scene
The World Looks Red

https://open.spotify.com/album/0WCESPeSMPElpEddTE4KeG…

Listening Post: Sonic Youth - Dirty

I've got to be missing something.......




Sonic Youth - Dirty - 1992 (Amazon - iTunes)

I do admit, from the opening strains of 100 Percent, it really feels like Sonic Youth has traveled well afar from their noise-only early days. Then the most amazing thing happened.

I woke up.

And the record was over.

Sonic Youth puts me to sleep. It's just white noise after a while.

Honestly, I had to go back and remind myself of what I was listening to.

And if I never have to listen to "Why are you so meano" on Swimsuit Issue I will be just fine thank you.

Grade D
A Side: 100 Percent, Purr
BlindSide: Nothing. It's everything one would expect from the masters of atonal noise rock.
DownSide: Swimsuit Issue...well, anything that Kim Gordon is singing on on this piece of atonal crap.

Listening Post: Sonic Youth - Goo

After Daydream Nation, Sonic Youth finds itself with a big time record deal. What do they do with it?



Sonic Youth - Goo - 1990 Buy it(iTunes Amazon)

After almost a decade of headscratchingly embraced ear scraping followed by brilliance, SY was courted to DGC and came up with their most accessible album to date.
Moody, graceful, lyrical, sad. These are just some of the words that come to mind when listening to Goo.
For the first time Kim Gordon's contributions are tolerable. In fact, the Karen Carpenter tribute, Tunic, might be one of the most haunting songs I've ever heard, from the perspective of the deceased, wherein she is, dare we say it, almost happy? Truth is, this is a Gordon heavy record.And, good thing.
There are actual songs here. Like Mary-Christ and Kool Thing. Who knew they had it in them, really?
Disappearer seems to take the hand off from Teen Age Riot and run with it. And then there's Mildred Pierce, which, I guess is about Mildred Pierce, even though the only words in the song is the eerie, b-movie narrator saying, "Mildred Pierce". And the distorted car crash of horror at the end, of course.
In the end, Goo is a great place to start listening to SY. Or maybe you don't need to hear anything else. I don't know. I'm about to find out.

Grade A
A Side: Tunic, Mary-Christ, Kool Thing
BlindSide: My Friend Goo, Mildred Pierce.
Downside: Scooter & Jinx, Titanium Expose

Listening Post: Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation

Daydream Nation is considered an underground 80s classic. A true masterpiece. Is it?



Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation - 1988 (iTunes - Amazon)


About three minutes into Teen Age Riot I had a thought: Did Thurston Moore, et al, take a good hard look at the vomitorium of dischord they had put out, toss it to the side and just start listening to R.E.M. records? because it's painfully obvious that they were affected by that sound (as well as The Replacements, perhaps echo & the bunnymen, a little dash of The Records and a bunch of other mid-80s bands I am too addled to remember right now).
The edgy punk of Silver Rocket coming on the heels of Teen Age Riot is actually the second song IN A ROW that I could hear myself or audience members singing along to. Weird.
And The Sprawl is the first time that I feel Kim Gordon's wailing talk singing actually works. The "noise-scapes" exist here only in service of the song. Before Daydream nation I would be hard pressed to believe that anyone in that band can play any of the previous four albums' songs without having to get the record out first, as similar and indistinct (two words that mean the same thing) as they are. Now I might just have to buy the reissue with the live versions of every track just to enjoy them all over again.
The first true punk epic from Sonic Youth, the most accessibly neurotic, panic stricken piece of music is right here in the dustbowl/punk/horrorshow "'Cross the Breeze". A bloodletting of the first order.
"Total Trash" is almost poppy for god's sake. I'm impressed, I really didn't think they had this in them.
"Providence", a phone message from Mike Watt set to a background taht can only be described as "David Lynchian" is a real treat, believe it or not. It's almost a palette cleanser for the album's 2nd act. (although the halfway point would be somewhat sooner...) leading into the familiar but fresh "Candle".
There's a redundancy that sets in toward the end and into the "trilogy" but, ending with the Sonic Youth meets ZZ Top, Eliminator Z is inspired.
Absolutely the band's best work.
Brilliant.


But Sonic Youth definitely owe R.E.M. a residual check.

Grade A
A Side: Teen Age Riot, Cross the Breeze
BlindSide: Silver Rocket, Providence
DownSide: nothing. Solid outing here.

Listening Post: Sonic Youth - Sister

The critics say that this is the first masterpiece by SY. Are they right?




Okay. I didn't get the memo. Because Sister made my ears hurt. I don't think it really helped that I was listening to it in the car. I don't think Sonic Youth is meant to be listened to while your driving. Because I drove over the median and smashed head first into an oncoming Prius and walked away, bloody from the scene and crawled home to write this review.
Well, that's what I WANTED to do.
This is the first time that I might dump out of a Listening Post before the halfway mark. Except for the Aerosmith reviews (I didn't get to the last two) I have slogged through some horrible shit to get to the end. (Bon Jovi, anyone?)
But, this could be the nadir of all for me. Because with Sister being listed as the 14th best album of the 80s by Pitchfork (I fucking hate Pitchfork.....) and NME rating it 80th of all time, I really think I'm missing something.

Okay. Screed out of the way. Truth is, Sister started out promising. I really thought the one-two of Schizophrenia and (I Got a) Catholic Block was pretty tight. And then it fell to shit for a while. In fact, the template of nausea/headache inducing odd guitar tuning, wall of noise is getting stronger and more concrete as a "sound" and I'm not getting it.

Certainly no one sounds like SY. I think that's good. Rating this highly mediocre melding of the move toward songs on Evol and dystopic dischordance of Confusion is Sex as a masterpiece is off. It's got moments. It's not brilliant.

I'm giving them one more. (It helps that the next one is Daydream Nation, their most heralded)

Grade C-
A Side: Schizophrenia, (I Got A) catholic Block.
BlindSide: Stereo Sanctity
DownSide:Beauty Lies in the Eye, Pipeline/KillTime, Cotton Crown

Listening Post: Sonic Youth - EVOL

Sonic Youth delivers an album with, let's call them songs. Why not?



Sonic Youth - EVOL - 1986 (iTunes - Amazon)

I'm not sure if someone had a little sit-down with Thurston and the gang but the first thing you notice from the opening strains of "Tom Violence" is that Evol might not be a travelogue of distortionary soundscapes but actually might have some promise.
The quiet desperation of "Shadow of Doubt" which builds to a nightmare is where I can tell that the band is secure enough in their storytelling and lyrics to allow the music to inform the song rather than the lyrics serving as a perfunctory necessity.
While Star Power goes on about a week too long, you don't really notice it. There is something, as I have said before, about the hypnotic nature of SY's music. It doesn't put you to sleep but it allows you to appreciate it and do other things at the same time.
The proto-punk beat poem In The Kingdom #19 by Lee Ranaldo is one of the best spoken word I've heard in a while.
I think special attention should be paid to the instrumental Death to Our Friends. A powerful and haunting, primitive and aggressive piece, I would like to see somebody choreograph something to it.
Lydia Lunch shows up again to co-write Marilyn Moore, easily the nadir of the album. But not even she can kill the glow on this offering.
The real gold is saved for the end. "Expressway to Yr. Skull" (aka The Crucifixion of Sean Penn/Madonna, Sean and Me)" is a post-punk, No-Wave rock epic. At 7 minutes it's a climb up Kilimanjaro and dive off into the great coral reef. Brilliant. Reeling. Slippery. Edgy.
Make no mistake. This is not a "rock album". It's barely a collection of songs. It's an evolution of the soundscape work the band has been mining for about a half decade at this point.
But, if you find yourself missing the old Late night radio show, "headsets." this is a great substitution. And a great place to start if you want to get into the Sonic Youth canon.

Grade A
A Side: Star Power, Expressway to Yr. Skull" (aka The Crucifixion of Sean Penn/Madonna, Sean and Me)
BlindSide: Shadow of Doubt, In The Kingdom #19, Death to Our Friends,
DownSide: Marilyn Moore

listening Post: Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising

When I was in college I had a short lived, Spinal Tap inspired punk band: Yeast Infection. We consisted of an ambient noise inducing guitarist (who is now an esteemed newspaper editor), a pair of dating male and female vocalists; the woman (an investigator of hate organizations now) would wail dischordantly) while the male (now a respected television and film director) warbled almost on tune, despite attempting not to. And me. I was the drummer who pounded on cardboard while shouting, "I'm Phil Collins!".
Why am I telling you this?
Because with just a little more talent, drive and direction, we could have been Sonic Youth.
Unless they are as great as their legacy.
They've been together since 1981 (holy smokes) and I only know their big album for DGC (Goo) and the song, "Teenage Riot" from the Rock Band video game.
Let's learn more, shall we?



Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising - 1985 (iTunes - Amazon)

This is NOT Creedence Clearwater Revival.
This is not even Yeast Infection.
This is what you get when you are left to your own devices and ego and told that you're brilliant and listen to way too many goddamn Residents records.
I haven't heard a worse sophomore record since U2's Gloria.
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.

Grade D
A Side: Death Valley '69
BlindSide: I'm Insane, Intro, Brave men Run (in my family)
DownSide: Society is a Hole, Ghost Bitch, Satan in Boring,

Listening Post: Sonic Youth - Confusion is Sex

When I was in college I had a short lived, Spinal Tap inspired punk band: Yeast Infection. We consisted of an ambient noise inducing guitarist (who is now an esteemed newspaper editor), a pair of dating male and female vocalists; the woman (an investigator of hate organizations now) would wail dischordantly) while the male (now a respected television and film director) warbled almost on tune, despite attempting not to. And me. I was the drummer who pounded on cardboard while shouting, "I'm Phil Collins!".
Why am I telling you this?
Because with just a little more talent, drive and direction, we could have been Sonic Youth.
Unless they are as great as their legacy.
They've been together since 1981 (holy smokes) and I only know their big album for DGC (Goo) and the song, "Teenage Riot" from the Rock Band video game.
Let's learn more, shall we?



Sonic Youth - Confusion is Sex - 1983 (iTunes - Amazon)

In the past Listening Posts I have always tried my damnedest to give the benefit of the doubt to any band's debut offering.
Nothing's changing here.
Confusion is Sex is listed in various places as "No Wave". I understand that moniker but it made me start to think about New Wave and it's quitessential poster children, The Cars. I've been playing some songs by The Cars on Rock Band, and I enjoy switching over to Bass to really hear what Orr was playing. The more I think about it, there was nothing truly New Wave about The Cars. Orr's basslines are simple and, heck, rooted in 50s rock n roll. Ocasek's quivery voice and Hawkes' keyboards are the only thing futuristic in the slightest. The Cars weren't New Wave. They were Old School dressed up in neon.
Sonic Youth is the New Wave of waves. Lo-Fi to the point of being obnoxious, every track is strangely hypnotic. SY is the only music I have ever found myself getting lost in AND being able to read a novel while listening at the same time. Classical demands that I pay attention, Rock, jazz, etc, all call on the listener to distract themselves. You can listen to Sonic Youth and love it, or you can put it on as background music. Either way, it works. I've never heard anything like that.
Ambient to it's core, Confusion is Sex is a groundwork, a culmination of the beginnings of ideas.
Tracks like Protect Me You could be the soundtrack to a Killer Orphan Slasher Movie. In a good way. Whereas Shaking Hell ALMOST sounds like a song. But it's not, really. It's an audition to score some NYU Experimental film.
Some songs, like Confusion is Next, are actually worse than Yeast Infection's and that's saying something.
There is a lot of value here, though. Along with Laurie Anderson and Glenn Branca and others, this is what the post-New Wave art sound was sounding like in the early 80s. A great time for music, when you think about it.

Grade C
A Side: She's in a Bad Mood, Making the Nature Scene
BlindSide: The World Looks Red
DownSide: Confusion is Next, Freezer Burn/I Wanna Be Your Dog (Live)