Albums by this artist

Does the listener have to approach music in the same way the band it approaches it? Can a song's producers and consumers start in two very different places and meet somewhere in the middle? What if the band changes the agenda on an album-to-album and frequently song-by-song basis? Sonic Youth have built a career around asking these questions. Or maybe it's more accurate to say they haven't asked any questions at all, merely made whatever music was possessing them at the time and left lame critic types like myself to project controversies onto them.

Eventually, Sonic Youth found their way to a method both naturalistic and forward-thinking, but they took their sweet time in getting there. The first several SY releases, all skronk and growling, don't move much beyond the no wave legacy that birthed them. It's not until EVOL that things start getting interesting. It's an imperfect album, but one with personality, and a few absolute stone cold creepy noise rock classics.

Let's start our discussion with "Madonna, Sean And Me" (aka "Expressway To Yr Skull,") the album's penultimate track and the first recorded succesful example of exactly what it is Sonic Youth is on about. With wavering guitars, vaguely ominous lyrics, and an ever-so-slightly out-of-key Thurston Moore vocal, "Expressway" is all about sound, not noise. There is a distinction. All of SY's best songs use their hail of guitars, scrapes of bass, and thunk of drum with a sense of purpose. They can be dissonant, but they are seldom unlistenable. They can be difficult, but they are seldom abusive.

The rest of EVOL establishes many wells Sonic Youth will draw from later -- "Bubblegum" is the snotty cover, "Star Power" the fairly effective concession to pop song structure, "In The Kingdom #19" a "The Gift"-ish mixture of arty spoken word and car jamming. It doesn't flow as smoothly as later work, and the band's instrumental reach yet exceeds its grasp, but EVOL is still the first "important" Sonic Youth album, as all their albums since have been either better or worse applications of the basic principles found here. Post-EVOL, Sonic Youth's standard releases have all been Venn diagrams of noise, structure, and drive, and which ones are your favorites depend on whether you skew towards rhythm (Daydream Nation), mood (Sister), or brevity (Dirty).

In short, it's good stuff, and after a few attentive spins, it's much harder to misunderstand (though not necessarily any easier to like) the meandering that has occurred since.

MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.