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From Geffen to Starbucks to fake plastic guitars, Sonic Youth continue to sell out!!! (Except for the thing about still making relevant, good records)

Source: http://www.megatonik.com/2007/09/16/rum ... st-leaked/

Kool Thing isn't my favorite SY song - in fact, I don't really like Goo - but I'm a big Guitar Hero 2 fan and I'll probably have a whopping good time playing it in this edition.

That is, if I buy it in the first place! Video games are a waste of everyone's life! Slintler!

This band hasn't been relevant since EVOL in 86. It has been a slow nose dive since.

punch_the_lion wrote:This band hasn't been relevant since EVOL in 86. It has been a slow nose dive since.

relevant is relative.

to me this band was never relevant.

that damned fly wrote:

punch_the_lion wrote:This band hasn't been relevant since EVOL in 86. It has been a slow nose dive since.

relevant is relative.

to me this band was never relevant.

At the beginning of the eighties SY helped ushered in a new kind of avant-garde experimentalism in rock. They declined because they began to play it safe and started to have an identifiable sound. They became predictable. Subsequent albums had occasionally good songs but on the whole very mediocre. Much the same for their contemporaries the Swans.

punch_the_lion wrote:At the beginning of the eighties SY helped ushered in a new kind of avant-garde experimentalism in rock. They declined because they began to play it safe and started to have an identifiable sound. They became predictable. Subsequent albums had occasionally good songs but on the whole very mediocre. Much the same for their contemporaries the Swans.

I won't disagree - 'specially about the Swans - but I find that for every beautiful/ ingenuous aspect of Sonic Youth's music, there's at least 2 or 3 drawbacks, like those, uh, "guitar solos" on Confusion is Sex.

Perhaps they are intentional. Perhaps they are improvised. But the band's strokes of infectious genius have always been covered by failing pretences.

punch_the_lion wrote:At the beginning of the eighties SY helped ushered in a new kind of avant-garde experimentalism in rock. They declined because they began to play it safe and started to have an identifiable sound. They became predictable. Subsequent albums had occasionally good songs but on the whole very mediocre.

This is true. I should not have made such a big leap in my original post; I was trying to be jokey more than anything.

Consider it revised to: Sonic Youth continues to put out good, ultimately irrelevant records.

Ace wrote:like those, uh, "guitar solos" on Confusion is Sex.

What do you mean by that? Lee's fiddlin' around on The World Looks Red? I like that. The real problem for me is that they weren't consistently good songwriters at that point. For instance, the second half of Confusion is Next (where they repeat the first part, but HARDER!) is so juvenile and out of place. See also Kill Your Idols which does the exact same thing.

The turn they took to get to "Goo", I wouldn't put anything past them, but they still make good music. I'm not ashamed to play Murray St., or Sonic Nurse, but their 80's material is the first place I go to get my "Sonic Fix".

comparision to Swans is convienient but isn't really.. Relevant.
So how is an era of this band not?
What/?

This band is just not a big deal. They make music. Some of it is good. Some not so good.

The second this band stops being held to a higher standard is the second some folks might find they're not that bad after all.

Sonic Youth has made great recordings and still do...and they remain relevant.

It's you who's not relevant and make recordings that probably won't amount to anything.

Just saying.