Albums by this artist

"All you need," Beulah tell us, "is a pretty song." Note the singular. Whether by accident or design, Sonic Youth finally got around to writing a pretty song on Daydream Nation. That this sudden grasp of pop functionality ("Teen Age Riot") coincided with their most purposeful and coherent album-statement is a fortunate coincidence. It has little bearing on their subsequent signing to a major label, though. No one who knows anything about the mechanisms of the corporate rock industry would ever suggest Geffen would sign a band they didn't think could move millions of records.

And Sonic Youth could have, maybe, if they were on that tack, and not merely brushing by it with "Riot" and a few of Nation's other concise, riff-y set piece tracks, like "Candle" or "Eric's Trip." These stabs at relative traditionalism have a larger significance, though. Not only because they rock like fuck, but also because rather than being measured attempts at "breaking through" to a larger audience, the catchy songs on Daydream Nation are part of a larger act of intellectual subversion, an anti-Reagan, pro-art, pro-noise, pro-indie rock broadside that's less a concept album than an hour-plus anthem. Everything SY had done before (and nearly everything they've done since) had been personal. Daydream Nation, as asserted in the title, is about the universal. That's why it's the Sonic Youth album that most hold dear. It's not a record you appreciate, it's a record you're involved in. Although it's a record about a time, it's never explicitly so. Nation's songs still work today, it's dated much better than some of the '80s' other politically astute records, like the Minutemen's Double Nickels On The Dime or anything by Billy Bragg.

That's most so because even though lyrics take more of a prominence on Daydream Nation than anywhere else in Sonic Youth's catalog, it's still the music left to make the major statements. From the precision thunderstorm guitars of "The Sprawl" to every tortured minute of the undeniably pretentious but also undeniably excellent "Trilogy," Daydream Nation is loud and uncontestable proof that the fringes of culture matter. To stamp them out would be to kill art itself. Culture doesn't develop without pressure from the inside, and for every band they've produced, drummed for, championed, toured with, or even just lent tremendous instant credibility to by showing up at the performances of, Sonic Youth has been the shout in the wilderness that's started a cultural landslide.

Even if said landslide (here I am talking about Nirvana) proved so forceful and unbending that it burrowed its way right back into the underground, that doesn't make Sonic Youth's role in the proceedings any less significant. While most of the indie 1980s were spent looking backwards -- The Replacements were the new Big Star, the Meat Puppets the new Dead, R.E.M. and the Feelies the new Velvets -- Daydream Nation was a giant leap forward. Many of us indie guitar slingers are still picking through the rubble of its aftermath, trying to turn those now-hallowed tunings into new gold. Influence and significance. That's what you look for in a great album.

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.