SOUNDTRACK: SONIC YOUTH-Daydream Nation (1988).
Normally I like to review a band’s albums chronologically. But because in this post [which I just stumbled upon] on Infinite Summer, Colin Meloy mentions that he bought a copy of Daydream Nation at the same time as Infinite Jest, and since I was talking about Sonic Youth anyway, well, it seemed like an easy fit.
So Daydream Nation is generally rated as Sonic Youth’s best album, with most people calling it a masterpiece. I actually came to Daydream Nation pretty late in my SY appreciation. I had gotten EVOL but really got into them with Goo. And as I worked my way around their catalog, Daydream Nation was always the big double album that I put off getting. All of this is to say that I’ve never loved Daydream Nation as much as every one else.
But I’ve been listening to it a lot recently, and my opinion is definitely changing about it. The thing that always got me about Daydream Nation was that the first two songs are fantastic, in fact, “Teen Age Riot” has always been one of my favorite songs. And even “The Sprawl,” Kim’s cool, nasty song is great. But somewhere in the middle of the noisy instrumental section of that song, I always sort of faded out, and couldn’t really get into it.
What I have since learned is that if you actually focus on the disc, you know, not just as an interesting listen but as something to really get into, it’s quite intense. Like “Providence,” a song that I never really listened to before is a very interesting piece. (I also didn’t know that that Mike Watt was the voice on the answering machine). And “‘Cross the Breeze” is a noisy ramshackle song that when you really listen is pretty darn amazing.
One of the things that I didn’t really like about the disc was that the songs themselves were very pretty, and the noisy instrumental sections of the songs always felt sort of tacked on, like they need to keep the songs from being commercially viable. It was never like an organic fit.
Indeed, the main sections of many of the songs are commercial and catchy. The general image of Sonic Youth is of guys with screwdrivers wrenched into their broken guitars, strangling every last note out of them. And yet, the opening guitar riff of “Teen Age Riot” is beautiful. And, of Course, “Eric’s Trip” is supremely catchy. Once again, the guitar riff for “Total Trash” could easily be a pop song were it not 7 minutes long. And the opening of “Candle” is quite pretty as well. “Kissability” is another song that could be a pop single, if it were ever so slightly less twisted (of course it wouldn’t be as good, but that’s not the point).
But with each subsequent listen, I’m appreciating more and more of it. I still feel that Goo has a more organic use of noise, with the crazy feedback sections seeming to stem from the songs quite naturally. Nevertheless, since Daydream Nation came first, it certainly gets kudos for originating the style.
[READ: Week of July 13] Infinite Jest (to page 283)
That’s not my copy of IJ autographed, it comes from this flickr stream. I do have an autographed copy of A Supposedly Fun Thing… which has a similar smiley face.
I feel the need to apologize to Infinite Summer readers in that somehow I missed the page with the Spoiler Line Pages listed. Okay, this is ingenuous, I didn’t read all of the website, and so I just never saw that listing. I was more or less going on a 75 +/- page count, so I may not have been right on time with the Spoiler Line. Now that I actually printed a copy, I’ll be keeping to a more proper schedule. So, apologies if I messed up anyone’s read!
Also, I feel I have erred egregiously in my first three posts by referring to the Endnotes as Footnotes, which they clearly are not. And I will be going back and amending that in the previous posts. I also get a swift rap on the knuckles for such a grade-school error.
I recently saw on InfiniteTasks, this hilarious link to a DFW/NASCAR article on the Onion, and while it is of course, very funny, I found this Onion link to be far more Infinite Summer appropriate:
Girlfriend Stops Reading David Foster Wallace Breakup Letter at Page 20
The whole piece is very funny, and there’s an “excerpted photo” which I’m attaching at the bottom of this post.
But on to the book.
This week’s reading was much more focused in terms of who we’re talking about: lengthy sections regarding select groups, rather than a few pages of random or unknown characters. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 