The Eternal will be 10 years old soon.
 

I'm getting fucking old.

Discuss.

10? that flies. time to relisten

radios play nothing when she's far away/ TV antenna rusts and gone to waste..

late SY era, mark ibold, matador records...



great live footage by Jef Martens from the Eternal tour in Brussels. was lucky enough to see three shows from that tour. that was one of them. and it was a good night too. btw., seen the whole footage of that show and it is amazing. pitty it ended up in archives for timebeing..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU2K4XlIqPU

always wondering how cool would it be to see them play in 80ies or 90ies.

massage the history and what we know are def. my fav. from this album. like this vid. a lot too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rL7OKG_NVQ

It was a wonderful album to go out on. It's hard to believe they did not plan it as the last one.

I thought they were doing sessions for the next one when the split happened. I wonder if there is anything in the vaults from 2011ish.

Whaaaa?

It’s easily their worst full-length, official discography album.

It has some great tunes, but to end a career on that? It’s the tamest version of Sonic Youth ever. Even tamer than the overtly and deliberately poppy Rather Ripped.

Good album, “Massage the History” is goddamn great, and I played the thing like crazy when it came out, but it’s the only album from the 2000s that I haven’t felt compelled to revisit with mind-blowing results.

Maybe I’ll give it a spin again soon, but man... when they broke up after that record, I was depressed as hell.

Massage the History, Antenna, Poison Arrow for me.

Yikes!!

I agree with you on many things musical, but on this, we will have to agree to disagree.

So, you think that The Eternal was an adequate way to cap a career that kicked off in earnest with Bad Moon Rising, contained three of the most influential and adventurous trilogies of albums of the past 40 years and, up until the end, was operating on all cylinders with the perfect Murray Street, the very-near-perfect Sonic Nurse and the band *finally* succeeding in creating a marketable noise-pop record that was neither too avant-garde nor too traditional on Rather Ripped?

The Eternal? Really?

I would have preferred the end with a balls-out, epic noise-punk squall. Instead they ended with the least essential album they ever made.

But again, it’s SY, so it’s still good stuff, but I wish it had ended differently.

yet, the album peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard 200 and was the band's highest charting album of their career in the United States and highest charting album since EJSTNS. :D

On the pop-rock aspects of the album, Moore noted, "I can sort of see a relationship between some of The Eternal and Dirty in terms of the dynamic". He argued that the band "definitely wanted to make songs as opposed to doing an avant-garde opus".On the choice of Matador, he explained that "we decided that they're a really strong song-supportive label". Ranaldo noted how they found inspiration in their earlier recordings on Daydream Nation, which "had an energy that we'd kind of forgotten about, and some of that energy and the experience of doing those songs impacted on the new record."

I don't really like The Eternal but I think it's a LOT better than Rather Ripped.

I wouldn't call it a "fitting finale" either, but they were never going to go out with anything that sounded like the otherworldly, noisy work they produced in the 80s anyway. To me, the band's final three albums are very much the sound of a band going through the motions (I don't share your love of Sonic Nurse, it seems, albeit it's miles better than RR and Eternal). I kind of wish they'd just chucked it after Murray Street, which I like a lot.

Well, charts have never meant anything in SY discussions, so I’m not sure what the grin is for. There’s almost no correlation between popularity and quality when it comes to SY.

Anyway, very disappointing final record for a band with one of the best discographies in music.

Would be much less pissy about it if it hadn’t ended with that. Though “Massage the History” is a good final track.

yes :D

meaning, how ironic.

don’t you think?

I do.

A traffic jam when you're already late
A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break
It's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife
It's meeting the man of my dreams
And then meeting his beautiful wife
And isn't it ironic, don't you think
A little too ironic, and yeah I really do think

K, but what meaning. That you’re happy? Feeling smug about your point that sales = quality? Obviously if that were the case, we’d all be on a different forum.

it's like rain on your wedding day! xD xD xD

Isn't it ironic that the lyrics to AM's song are not examples of irony, but rather, misfortune? Irony is if a person is late to receiving an award for punctuality, or even a no-smoking sign in a smoke shop. Was always annoyed by this... but of course, there are bigger concerns in life.

is my English that bad? meaning that this would be one of weakest albums in their discography, yet it was one of the best selling albums since EJTNS...how ironic... does that make any sense, coz now I am not sure now :)

Gotcha.

Sorry for some reason I thought you were on the “Eternal was a great way to end it!” side of things.

Yes. Agree. Probably my mistake.

Not really ironic, no.

Well... kinda. It’s kinda ironic that the song called ironic that strives to give examples of irony doesn’t give any. But I think another word is better: dumb.

It’s dumb that she fails to name an instance of actual irony.

(Though 10,000 spoons when you need a knife is kind of ironic... *thinkyface*)

If on any other day there's an abundance of knives and no spoons, except for that one particular day when I need a knife and there are none but only 10,000 spoons. That is, the reality is different from or the opposite of what is reasonably expected (not hoped for or needed).

Agree, dumb... unless it was her intent all along to name a song "Ironic" with lyrics that purport to exemplify irony and yet fall just short of it.

Perhaps it's ironic that I've put so much thought into something that I claim to be inconsequential.

The Eternal, not a favorite, but it has grown on me as a later-stage SY.

Is it ironic that The Eternal is SY's best album of the Oughties, and a wonderful way to end their career (albeit unknowingly), but most people at this thread on the official website don't care for it much?

Well, on any other day you’d have a normal silverware place setting, so I don’t know where that leaves us.


Yes.


No, you’re not the only one who’s been bugged by this for years.

The 98-year-old man dying in a plane crash after being afraid of dying in a plan crash is not ironic. It’s precognition. It would be ironic if he feared and avoided flying, then took a trip to Hawaii and was instantly killed by falling on his face outside the airport.


Not me. I still think of it as meh, with a couple choice cuts. Every other SY album is choice with a couple meh cuts (at most)

Not at all.

That is merely an indication that it might not be that good of an album.

Imagine if the Beatles ended with Help! *after* making Sgt. Pepper, Revolver, White Album, Abbey Road, etc. That’s what Eternal feels like to me.

I like it.

It honestly isn't that great of an album. Tbh, it just about reaches "good" levels for an album. There are three solid songs after that meh. Those last two albums are generally forgettable in my eyes.

^ most sy albums aremt good

She, supposedly, admitted to this error. She indicated she wrote the song when she was younger, knew they were not really ironic, but decided to do the song as it was written. Not that it really matters or anything. :D

I penned a comedic joke about the "irony" years ago. It was hilarious; pissed off my AM-loving friend, but they also laughed hysterically! I, to this day, am trying to rememeber what it was!

Why are we talking about Alanis?

I don’t think anyone was not making jokes about the fact that none of those things were examples of irony.

(Shrug)

Eternal?

because it’s still funny

Is it?

yeah i really do think (lmfao)

that shit is a milestone in gen-x history. it’s... eternal lolololo



buddy christ agrees

I like Dogma. The movie, not the general ... y’know ... thing.

The Eternal will be 10 years old soon
 

77 years old puts him at only 66 when the show started. I thought he was 90...hard life.

Damn...10 fucking years.

quoted for truth

/the eternal is not that bad but also not very good. definitely the most inconsequential record they ever put out but also kind of cute/sweet for that reason?

Definitely not their best record. I like it and can listen to it enjoying a band that showed more enthusiasm for being Sonic Youth than the record that came before it. It's a good thing it came out and then they all fucked off to sort out whatever personal problems they were dealing with at the time. If it's the last we hear from them as band, it's an enjoyable record. They'd never be able to do Confusion is Sex again or whatever. And why should they, anyway?