sonic youth superstar other recordings of this song

SONIC YOUTH SUPERSTAR OTHER RECORDINGS OF THIS SONG FULL

Little Trouble Girl (1995)Ī fabulous anomaly in Sonic Youth’s catalogue, Little Trouble Girl was both an examination of preconceptions about teenage girls and a song that stripped away the band’s signature sounds in a gorgeous, warped homage to 60s girl groups – most specifically the angst-ridden Shangri-Las of I Can Never Go Home Anymore and Past, Present and Future.

The Macaulay Culkin-starring video garnered headlines, but you want the full-length album version for the song’s guitar interplay in all its glory.

The band rampaging through Confusion Is Sex or Death Valley ’69 sounded like they might burn bright but fast, but Sonic Youth wore maturity incredibly well, as evidenced by 1998’s careworn Sunday. Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth at Rock Torhout/Rock Werchter festival in Belgium, 1993. The brief moment at 1:49, where everything else drops out, leaving drummer Steve Shelley – a talent sometimes under-appreciated in the rush to praise the band’s radical approach to guitar playing – thundering away is just fantastic. You can hear the influence of grunge on the riff of 100%, a feedback-strafed eulogy for murdered friend Joe Cole. The lengthy intro is sublime the deft switches from something approaching straightforward alt-rock to explosions of noisy avant guitar are stunning.

The lyrics of Candle defy explication – look online and you can find people suggesting they’re about everything from the purity of love to crystal meth addiction – but it hardly matters. The Manson murders had hung over rock music for 15 years by the time Sonic Youth recorded Death Valley ’69, a ferocious, viscerally powerful song written from the fractured point of view of a Manson Family member: the bloody, zero-budget video – by transgressive director Richard Kern – is the perfect accompaniment. Sonic Youth’s response to 9/11 offers a simple but affecting plea for unity in the face of horror: “Gather round, gather friend, never fear, never again.” The music, meanwhile, evokes the ghosts of New York’s past: there are moments where the guitars entwine around each other in a way that distinctly recalls Television. Sonic Youth at Pukkelpop festival, Belgium, 1991. Its understated power is exemplified by the languid, Pavement-influenced Sweet Shine, disrupted by Gordon’s sudden shift to throat-shredding howl midway through.

Sweet Shine (1994)Īpparently recorded over the master tape of 1987’s Sister, Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star was a defiantly subdued, refusenik gesture in the wake of the post-Nirvana alt-rock gold rush. As Anti-Orgasm grippingly proves – spiky, clashing guitars heaving, monotonal riff beautiful, off-beam coda – it couldn’t have been the work of anyone else. Sonic Youth’s final album, The Eternal, might have been the most straightforward they ever released, but then again, that’s a relative term. It starts out like jerky post-punk funk, then suddenly transforms: an unsettling Kim Gordon monologue over brooding, tense, detuned guitar noise. Thrillingly, you can almost hear the band finding themselves as Shaking Hell plays.

SONIC YOUTH SUPERSTAR OTHER RECORDINGS OF THIS SONG FULL

Sonic Youth’s first full album, Confusion Is Sex, was an abrasive leap forward from their awkward, half-formed debut EP.

Sonic youth superstar other recordings of this song