In an effort to force myself to update this blog at least every two months, I'm kicking off a series of classic album reviews. Maybe yet another obscure blogger's take on a much written about album is the last thing you'd want to read, but too bad. You're not reading this anyway, statistically speaking. I'll try to stay away from albums that have been hammered into the collective consciousness for decades such as Sgt. Pepper's or anything by Led Zeppelin, but I make no guarantees. And yes, I am aware that Coke Machine Glow or Tiny Mix Tapes or some other e-rag I don't read has or had a similar feature called The Delorean, another Back to the Future reference. You just watch how much fucking sleep I lose over that. So anyway, I want to tell you about my friend Goo...
Many people would have you believe that Sonic Youth's catalogue can be divided neatly and chronologically into a few groups, along with its fans: the self-titled EP through Daydream Nation are for aging indie fans and noise fetishists, Goo through Washing Machine is the point where the alt-rockers started taking notice, the awkward A Thousand Leaves through NYC Ghosts & Flowers period is for diehard fans who own everything else, and Murray Street through The Eternal is the entry point for young indie fans. Such profiling is obviously true to an extent, but really, Sonic Youth fans are as diverse a group as any, and their perspectives vary greatly.
Goo and Daydream Nation have never been as separate in my mind as for others, but it's easy to see why Goo is often seen as a clean break. It was the band's major label debut and found them a whole new audience, helped greatly by slicker production. On the other hand, it deals in the same odd tunings, feedback, dissonance and frantic hardcore-ish riffs, is thematically obscure and is only short in comparison to Daydream Nation. Old fans yelled "sellout" purely on principle. I mean did they listen to the fucking thing?
Oh yeah, the songs. I almost forgot about that. Goo sure has 'em! Kim Gordon's best song is here ("Tunic") and "Mote" is not only Lee Renaldo's finest moment, but also probably my favourite Sonic Youth song. That guy consistently manages to reduce an album's elements to a simple form and make a song that's all the better for it, but for some reason he's only ever allowed one song per album, if that. Shenanigans! Chuck D wins the award for Most Pointless Guest Appearance Ever for "Kool Thing", but nonetheless, that song is the perfect bridge between the "art rock" Sonic Youth (for want of a far better term) and the more straight ahead model that would see out most of the 90s. It'd be "Smells Like Teen Spirit" if there was no "Smells Like Teen Spirit". And by extension, Goo is the perfect primer for Nevermind, the production opus of future Sonic Youth collaborator Butch Vig; less accessible, sure, but built on the same clean, powerful sound (Steve Shelley's drums are rarely as prominent as they are here and on the Vig-produced follow-up Dirty), and, more importantly, similarly grand and ambitious, two traits that would be in increasingly short supply for rock music throughout the next two decades.
No comments:
Post a Comment