I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK–SONIC YOUTH-Sonic Youth (1982).

A new Sonic Youth disc (The Eternal) just came out which seemed like a perfect reason to go back and sift through their old discs as well.  And like Hüsker Dü, they were also on SST Records for a time.

This disc, their first, is possibly most notable for two things. One, their drummer (and this is the only disc of theirs that he appeared on) eventually became the parking attendant in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (“What country you think this is?”  “Relax…I’m a professional”) among other films.  And two: it is really not very noisy at all.

This disc falls into the No Wave camp, a style of music that I honestly don’t know very much about.  When I see lists of bands that are in this “genre” I sort of get it, and I even know a bunch of them, but I can’t ever say I sought it out.

I guess in many ways it’s not very Sonic Youth at all.  And yet for what it is, it’s quite good.  The minimalism is there.  (Except for the drums which are all over the place, including cool flourishes of tom toms!)  Kim’s bass rides pretty solidly throughout.  But the biggest difference is the guitars which don’t contribute waves of noise but rather occasional blasts of sound.  If anything it reminds me a lot of early Cure (like around Seventeen Seconds).

The guitars are very chimey, and I’ve read that the band is dissatisfied overall with the sound of the disc.  And yet despite that, it’s an interesting artifact.  Even if it isn’t a great Sonic Youth album, it’s a cool look at the alternative New York scene of the time.  And it’s cool to see the origins of this band.

I have just learned that it was reissued with all kinds of bonus material (I knew about the other back catalogue reissues on DGC but this one didn’t get the reissue back then).  The reissue has live tracks from around that time.  The samples indicate that the band played these songs a lot noisier live, but they don’t seem quite as chaotic as their next couple of releases..

[READ: July 8, 2009] “Ziggurat”

This was a weird little story that became even more surreal as it went along.

The story is set in the Labyrinth.  The Minotaur lives there and is currently lounging on a pool table in the game room. This Minotaur is not half bull, but is just a very large, very ugly creature.  He kills and eats anyone who comes near (whether as a sacrifice or as an attacker).

But now there’s a new girl.  She doesn’t flee.  She doesn’t even tremble, she simply plays a video game called Ziggurat (the object of which is to build a Tower of Babel before God can knock it over).  The Minotaur is dumbfounded by this behavior, so he lets her live.  Eventually, they start talking, and the Minotaur begins to feel emotions he didn’t think he had (guilt, longing). There’s also a very awkward and funny discussion about virgins.

We’re not entirely sure why the new girl is there.  It’s clear that she doesn’t wish to stay but she never really acts afraid around him, even though she knows what he is.

When the new girl goes away (and we’re not sure exactly how she went away), the Minotaur understands loss, and he sets out to fix things.  And from here it gets even more bizarre, with a recurrence of the Ziggurat conceit.  Although I found that it ended in a somewhat less than satisfying way.

I enjoyed a lot of this story, and there were some great lines and wonderful images, but I wished it had resolved itself a little better

It’s available here.

For ease of searching I include: Husker Du