Sonic Youth has received a mixed reception from critics. It was released in Europe on the German Zensor label in 1984.Ĭritical reception Professional ratings Review scores Sonic Youth was released on 12" vinyl in March 1982 on then-mentor Branca's record label Neutral. Kim Gordon has referred to it in her autobiography as an EP. Īlthough the original record clocks in at under 25 minutes in length, Sonic Youth is considered by the band to be their first studio album. The clean guitar tones contain little of the trademark noise that Sonic Youth would eventually become known for. The bass guitar, though often playing minor key riffs, is almost funk-based, which was a common feature of post-punk and no wave music. James Jackson Toth of Stereogum stated that the album "sounds like the dark, post-punk cousin of Thurston's spunky new wave band the Coachmen." Drum-wise, the songs feature the more " downtown" roto-tom-addled stylings of Richard Edson, approaching the quasi- funk/ hip-hop rhythms of 99 Records bands like ESG and Liquid Liquid. Sonic Youth is the only Sonic Youth release in which the guitars predominantly use standard tuning. Sonic Youth differs stylistically from the band's later work in its greater incorporation of clean guitars, standard tuning, crisp production and a post-punk style. It is the only recording featuring the early Sonic Youth lineup with Richard Edson on drums. It was recorded between December 1981 and January 1982 and released in March 1982 by Glenn Branca's Neutral label. Reflecting on their career, Moore said the thing about those cheap thrift-store guitars is that they usually didn’t sound good in regular tunings anyway, at least until you shoved a drumstick under the strings.Sonic Youth is the debut EP by American rock band Sonic Youth. No matter how far out their music got (Goodbye 20th Century), it never felt academic, a feat that brought experimental music down to earth and made rock seem more plausible and limitless than any artist since Jimi Hendrix. They could be brutal, but they could also be pretty-a deference to tradition that, ironically, only made them seem more radical: What could be more confrontational to an art snob than a guitar anthem (“Teen Age Riot”)? And while their gender equanimity was inspiring (they had two frontpeople, Moore and his former wife, Kim Gordon), the real progress lay in how they played with it: Moore sounding sensitive and ethereal, Gordon roaring like a nightmare truckdriver Moore, the head, Gordon, the body. No other band presided over so many developments in underground music: the evolution of punk and No Wave into what we now call “indie“ (the mid-to-late ‘80s run of Evol, Sister, and Daydream Nation), the alt-rock and grunge boom of the years that followed (1990’s Goo and 1992’s Dirty), the retreat into experiments (the SYR series) and final maturation into something like classic rock for ears weaned on noise (2006’s Rather Ripped and 2009’s The Eternal). There’s a moment on an old Sonic Youth live recording where, seeing that Thurston Moore is having trouble getting his guitar into its proper, highly unconventional tuning, Lee Ranaldo says, “We promise a new tuning every night, ladies and gentlemen!” It’s a throwaway line, but there’s poetry to it: Where else, in 1987, could you see a group of ostensibly avant-garde artists not only addressing the crowd, but making fun of their own avant-garde art while doing it? For 30 years, the band shaped the outer limits of sound-noise, free improvisation, modern classical-into something like rock music, bridging the visionary impulses of experimental art with the naive zeal of punk.
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