Are Sonic Youth the most overrated band of all time?

*waits for an avalanche of hipster outrage*

In terms of pretty melodies: Kim D > all of SY > Frank.

In terms of songs, which sadly for Pixies fans, include lyrics: Everyone else >> Frank.

In terms of efficient instrument use: All of SY > all Pixies.

They have now appended O'Rourke as "unofficial" (?) fifth member (cf. Eno/Heads) which I can't see will make much difference (Richard D James might have been a more interesting fifth member, or maybe Lauryn Hill) judging from what I've heard of the new record so far - business as usual.

So someone pls explain it. Without mentioning which tunings they use. PPLEASE.

But, ...**Plus they were instrumental in disseminating the seeds of so much that's still au courrant in contemporary indie/undie culture**

Perhaps that's another reason why they irritate me.

And what's all this shit abt SY not having any 'melodies and stuff'? I can think of LOADS of gd 'proper songs' they've written, that I can hum to myself and sing along to etc. 'Dirty' alone is full of 'hits'! But, y'know, sometimes they do OTHER THINGS too - they make gd noize, they write funny trippy lyrics, they have that three different singers thing going on which I always love, they do quiet/loud/horrible/beautiful sound better than anyone else, they are great 'curators' (I think Jess said something that on some other SY thread once), they still look cool, they still take risks ('Goodbye 20th Century' is one of their best ever recs), their guitar sound is a work of art in itself (it's those different tunings y'know), and if you like 'em they pretty much always deliver the goods (I have never been able to get into 'Washing Machine' for some reason...)

'Murray Street' is at least as good as most of the so-called classic albs - 'Karen Revisited' proves yet again that Lee Ranaldo is the unsung genius songwriter of the group, and 'Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style' excites me more than anything else I've heard all year...

If you gonna attack the youth then it's difficult to attack it from the melody angle since there's some great melodies.

Yeah, can't get the comparison w/pixies either.

Perhaps I should give SY another chance, I almost feel guilty for criticising a much loved alt-institution, so if I can discover 5 SY tracks with tunes the milkman can whistle I will stand corrected.

Recommendations?

Confusion Is Sex opens with a spectral clanging, then drums and bass enter, driving and ominous but not aggressive or rocking, then feedback in the background, then a pale nervous voice - this all waits and builds and claws at your neck for so long, never really exploding and offering any catharsis or release within the first song - this they had over Swans or Teenage Jesus, this recognition that waiting anxiously was more intense than being pummeled, that the terrors one creates for oneself in one's fantasies under tension are more frightening than any that can be set on one by external forces. Greil Marcus observed as much: "The music was moody, shapely, meandering from songs that resembled nothing so much as the sort of chants little kids come up with when they've been sent to their rooms without supper . . . to trances that seemed neither to begin nor end. The shapeliness of the music was internal. Without exact borders, the songs rose up, staked a claim on your attention, fears, or desires, and then turned into air." "Protect Me You", which is the chant of a little girl with the fear of known and unknown threats, builds terror similarly without release, nails-on-a- blackboard scrapes then a primal three-note minor-key bassline, then the blankly desperate chant opening the song. "Shaking Hell" is the sound of Branca's guitar temples set to the moans and screams of a woman's nightmares. The album's guitar clangs and scrapes and out-of- tune shaking didn't sound like anything familiar or comforting but they weren't empty horror theatrics. They were rich and beautiful at the same time, precisely studied and controlled. Listen to the guitars-as-gamelans love of sound in "Lee Is Free".

No, no, that would be PRML SCRM, I think.

SNC YTH (J34H!!! THE 0RIGINAL NO VOWEL BAND!!!) are great, the only bands I have more rekkids by are ash ra tempel and stereolab, make what u will of that. I like the quieter numbers w/ Thurston singing (EG "doctors orders" T-vox version on b-side ov "Bull in the Heather, [which k-sux0r{coz kim g's vox sux0r on quieter snc yth numbers}]) har har, and I REALLY like the loud snarky stuff with kim singing, like my favouritest snc yth trak ever, "HENDRIX NECRO", on the b-side ov er....er....(fuck) 100%! (phew thank u google) anyway chris sallis, possibly u r completely unhip, but i woudn't worry abt that if i wrer u. I think the pixies = sux0r, FWIW, and I think they are a bit overrated actually, tho they have that good bit i one ov their numbers where blax0r francis sings "you wrer the son of a mother fucker" which crax me up every time i hear it. Yes mark s, i am on thee budvar AGANE.

that they "work with modifed guitar" is beginning to get boring in the acousmatic /digital age where other indie/ attitude/ art/ "NYC" music has to a greater extent moved on from "every great guitar band" in terms of broadness of sound.

the Grateful Dead were in a rut of sorts for years. is that Dead comparison so innacurate ? SY are fond of Dead comparisons, aren't they ?

it is almost sick seeing adults "being rock stars" so maybe the lifestyle is rough, but if that is part of the point SY are making in much the same way as the Rolling Stones, some eternal youth thing .. how many non die-hard '85-'92 fans are there ? does the youth market come automatically via college radio ? I don't see many latest SY cds lying around at young people's places.

for many indie fans it will remain an endless artistic curiosity. Like the Beach Boys, touring constantly. That A&R advice about Nirvana must have proved worth about U2/10 $$$$ ? i'm just guessing.

I don't know how "melodic" SY are in this sense, but I think Dan's right that their melodiousness shouldn't be understated. If you transcribed a song like "Teenage Riot" (vocal melody and that riff), I would think that it might look fairly "melodic."

Funny, when I was a kid, I didn't hear heavy metal as being melodic at all. I think I had a revelation that I was wrong at some point hearing "Living After Midnight" by Judas Priest.

I went away to see an old friend of mine, his sister came over, she was out of her mind. She said Jesus had a twin who knew nothing about sin. She was laughing like crazy, at the trouble I'm in. Her light eyes were dancing she is insane. Her brother says she's just a bitch, with a golden chain. She keeps coming closer saying I can feel it in my bones,
Schizophrenia is taking me home

as for the vines, at least the songs of theirs that i know are "melodic" only in the most rudimentary sense: they do bop up and down the scale in the typical pop-punk way. but the melodies are far from inspired.

Contrariwise, the early ones still sound pretty good to me.

S

More like Gil Evans Monday Night Orchestra and/or Mingus Big Band with a dash of Branca. And Lee could read a poem if he wanted too.

I'm just not seeing any divide there, although maybe that's because I came after the fact (for the record, the only thing I've really not warmed to is Dirty, and even that has it's moments).

For me, almost all of their recorded work is good for a specific mood or moment, and that makes it all worthwhile for me. I can't really think of one of their albums that I don't want to listen to at least some of, some time...

And yeah, they are scared of embracing anything that's a bit other, away from their own defined sense of what "other" is - which is now by definition pretty samey because it's been their definition of other for so long that it's not really daring or experimental, etc. But they do what they do, and can be relied upon to do it well. They still hit a certain mood and sense of dissonant feeling with their music for me, and it still works.

But maybe it's just because I wasn't there when they were gonna CHANGE THE WORLDDDD! Although why you'd want somebody to just do that all the time, I cannot know. ie, I'm quite happy with the way their music has developed over the years! There's no lazy summer afternoon record quite like Murray Street, y'know...

ps. It's "I love you Golden Blue".

dressing up != being Madonna

I never really thought they were cool, in fact I never really knew anything about them. I just thought they sounded good!

And Kool Thing is a fun song! Is pop evil? I'd like them to go more pop, but I'd be scared they'd look like idiots.

Hahahaha!!! Yes! They do! Everyone should be creepy and kooky. It beats boring and mundane EVERY TIME.

I guess I just don't see what could be so horrific on a record as great as Washing Machine to make anyone feel this way, and I think context is an important thing in a lot of these cases.

Note: I do think Thurston is kind of a goofy idiot, but in a nice way in that it would be telling if he *wasn't* that way...

Have you tried being creepy and kooky for, what, 19 years? I don't think they're especially boring and mundane, unless of course you're going to SY to FREAK YOU OUT by being creepy and kooky. Like you remember them. In your dreams. Fondly. Oh, happy days.

Ha.

what about ambient synth washes where the notes fade in and out and thus have no specific beginning/ending?

Back to sonic youth, my email didn't get through but I'd like to offer a Sonic Youth mix to Dominique Leon.

Sonic Youth totally changed my life and my understanding of music. But I can say it's not just nostalgia that keeps me listening(primarily to the old albums), because like, it's been a long time since I've put on a Pop Will Eat Itself record...who affected me as much around the same time, for what it's worth.

I'm game, just use the email listed here

i think the brian wilson "cult" has reached the point where its leaders ought to apply to have it recognized as an official religion.

maybe true for their main albs BUT what about those SYR releases and 'goodbye 20th century'?! I was listening to that one over the weekend, and its among their very best records and an ok introduction to the avant-garde (even if its new york based).

Yeah, the songs sound totally half-assed these days. The sense of urgency that would suck you in even on kind of pointless songs like "Hey Joni" is long gone. It has been replaced by some sort of tongue-in-cheek (?) cliché act.

oh my.

"godfatherly/parasitic"

"Yeah, the songs sound totally half-assed these days. The sense of urgency that would suck you in even on kind of pointless songs like 'Hey Joni' is long gone. It has been replaced by some sort of tongue-in-cheek (?) cliché act."

1.)

I went to college in Amherst, MA and used to go to shows at the Flywheel, and in the park downtown. Kim and Thurston came out all the time, just hung out bought records, etc. They didn't seem like 'vultures' at all. They seemed like they were hanging out, and really liked music and brought their kid to see neat artists perform. It is kind of a bummer to just like music and art a lot, and go to shows and buy records for your whole life and then get famous and get called a parasite for going the places you always went and doing the things you've always done.

2.)'Kind of pointless'? Hey Joni is a gd barnburner with no let ups! Lee's twitching for the whole thing! Guitars are like alarm bells and time is fluid and despite this you can't beat the past and you can't know the future! More than urgent, cripes: it is a smackingly beautiful song.

And as for turning into a 'tongue-in-cheek (?) cliché act' Nurse is a sincere album. Paper Cup Exit is right up there with Lee's best-- a c'mere c'mere curling finger on a clit guitar line on the chorus, scope, no cynicism, hooks from thin air. A POME! A damn POME of America and the little wieners Sonic Youth is still playing to and believing in every tour. We were all those little wieners, and maybe that is part of some of the more personal, non-musical (or not specific) critiques leveled on this thread. "And the songs that changed your life, as you lay in awe on your bedroom floor and said oh smother me mother...yes you're older now, and you're a clever swine, but they were they were the only ones who ever stood by you."

They are an American rock band. They love America and Madonna and Mariah Carey and Tony Conrad and Ikue Mori and Pavement. They think about the president and politics and Paris Hilton and William Blake and Donald Miller and Jimmy Page. They love being huge and being nobodies and they are.

Anyway, "most" overrated"? No way, there's a lot of stiff competition for that one.

In the case of Sonic Youth, I'm not sure what "overrated" means. They certainly don't have the public profile they did in the early '90s. No one's claiming they're cranking out masterpieces (although they're still making solid albums).

The Go-Betweens are an apt band with which to compare them, ed. They don't make great albums anymore, but they're sure fun to follow (and defend).

Greatest art rock band of all time.