So I Finally Heard Rather Ripped
 

I found the spot in my front yard where my laptop picks up the wi-fi so I streamed the Rather Ripped, and must say I am rather impressed. it is a progression in ways, but in no way a let down, which I was fearing minus jim.

i've only sampled a few songs, i'm still kinda waiting to pop my rather ripped cherry on june 13th. but the small amount i've heard i have enjoyed, can't wait to pick it up!

after listening to it some more, yes it is in fact a very good record. its not as readily accesable as nurse was, but a good record with some good sonic jam moments. thanks sonic, for streaming the legit version

That's a pretty good assessment. I've listened to the album multiple times, the first time I thought it was a watered down version of their older material, but a few listens later, I think of it as a progression, and you can still hear their old style in there. Especially on pink steam.

Rather Ripped > Anything since Washing Machine

I think it's better than Sonic Nurse, songwise. Nurse had a wicked groove, Rather Ripped is pure song bliss.

with the exception of a thousand leaves, i'll agree with you

i've noticed we share similar, repeated sentiments

murray street is without a doubt the most boring sy record.

i still haven't heard that streaming, can't wait for an album. i heard new material only in live versions...soundz good. i just saw (dvd) sonic mirror performance from flywheel and it's fantastic

while goo is one of my least favorite sy albums, i meant what i typed

I personally like it more than A Thousand Leaves because it's shorter, more straight forward and the songs are much more diverse as a whole. A Thousand Leaves has songs way too long and drawn out(longer does not mean "better") and alot of the songs sound too similar. I like variety in songs.

NYG&F was their worst album by far but is not in any way a "bad" album...just SY's worst effort to date. Murray Street was better than NYG&F, but not as good as Nurse. That's understandable since by the time Nurse came out, Jim was more comfortable with the band.

But, this is just my opinion. I like Rather Ripped because:

1. Shorter songs-I tend to gravitate to the more shorter song albums which is why I prefer everything from Washing Machine and before over the anything after Washing Machine. A Thousand Leaves was a period where they changed their format and had songs that were much too long IMO that kinda killed some of the songs. I do like Daydream Nation and that had some long plays, but it also had more action and aggressiveness in their songs that made the long plays more interesting.

2. Variety-alot of the songs are just so different from eachother but you get a sense that they do have association to eachother. Do you believe in rapture is very different from Incinerate and The Neutral. I just think overall, SY did a great job making the song variety and sound stretch the spectrum.

3. Melody-it's the reason why I rate SISTER as my all time favorite album by any band and why I will always love the pre-A Thousand Leaves era SY.

4. Aggressive guitar action-I love things with power and straight to the point with SY. There are bands that I love that make music that takes time to start(like Califone/RRM, The For Carnation, tons of others), but that isn't what SY really are about. They finally get back to having fun on guitar and you can tell that Thurston & Lee just have a great language between them.

That's SY's formula. It's why Rather Ripped sounds very classic SY...because they abandoned their more recent approach to songwriting and got back to what they were good at: aggressive mean but melodic guitar with great hooks and short songs.

Sorry all, I just dont agree! I had very high hopes for Rather Ripped, but it really let me down. I thought that some of the musical ideas were good, but they seem underdeveloped. Like it's not all it could be. It falls a little flat. NOt necessarily a bad record, but not a ll that great. Knowing SY and there determination towards more noise, this is a more melodic record in the veain of Sonic Nurse and Murry Street, but in my opinion no where near as good. Sonic Nurse was a great record. Lush, beautiful music. Very "full" sounding. Rather Ripped seems empty. Maybe it's just me, but I can only get throguh part of the record before I have to turn it off. The only real track that reminds me that I'm actually listening to Sonic Youth is Rats by Lee, who is dangerously almost nonexistant in this record. I wish he could contribute more to each album, especially this one, cuz it really needs that kind of experimental strength that only Lee can pull off.

That's weird kingcoffee because SY haven't been "known for noise" since Bad Moon Rising. EVOL was melodic, SISTER was melodic, Daydream Nation might be the only "unmelodic" album after Bad Moon Rising. Goo was melodic, Dirty was melodic, EJST&NS wasn't really very melodic, Washing Machine was melodic, A Thousand Leaves wasn't, NYG&F wasn't melodic, Murray Street "tried" to be melodic, Nurse was melodic.

As far as I remember, SY have been about melody and that's exactly what they did with Rather Ripped. I don't quite see the Nurse or Murray ST comparison. Have you heard their album GOO or DIRTY? You'll hear alot of GOO(especially from TUNIC & CINDERELLA'S BIG SCORE), but I don't hear anything that reminds me of Nurse or Murray Street.

You don't have to be sorry either. It's your opinion, dude.

That's exactly what I think. I've got more confidence in Rather Ripped now after reading this thread(I'm waiting til it comes out)

Hmm, I don't understand that. Sure A Thousand Leaves had some long drawn out songs, but it also has Snare Girl and Hits of Sunshine, two of the best vocal melodies they've ever written, surely

Well, it had melody, but the songs were just really drawn out and tiring. Some of those songs could've been better edited and cut down by atleast 30%.

But then again, IMO A Thousand Leaves was all about atmosphere... Guitar bleeps and textures, culminating in a soundscape that is tethered to a song structure. IMO.

I'm really looking forward to it from what I've heard(Reena, Incinerate, Sleepin Around) and parts of other songs. The only thing that goes on too long for me on ATL is Hits of Sunshine. I still love that song though.

It's good. It grows on you; like all Sonic Youth releases it's bound to grow on me even more in time. I can't wait for the disc, but in no way is it better than Sonic Nurse.
That's crazy talk.

Then again, Rather Ripped is "better" in one aspect. It's better to play for neophytes that get bugged out by extended noise & it's more listener-friendly in general.

Rats would have been better on Sonic Nurse than Paper Cup Exit which would most likely sound better on Rather Ripped. Similarly, Kim Gordon & the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream would have perhaps been better suited for inclusion on Rather Ripped. Kim Chords would also fit into the new album well too as a dynamic change-up in texture. But you can't trace time & those tracks had Jim on them, & as we know, he isn't in the band anymore.
In most respects, I am sort of glad he's gone though.

It's better than Sonic Nurse in certain aspects, I think. Maybe not overall a better album, that's too far-fetched, but I personally think that in the composition of the songs and the melody underlying each song, Rather Ripped has a sizable advantage. Whether this is due to Jim O'Rourke's absence is not entirely clear, but I'm sure it has, to some extent, an influence. I am implying the melodies and composition of Rather Ripped are more tightly focused and brought to the forefront more than on Sonic Nurse, which to me, focused on a rock groove atmospheric specifically, not to say that the songs on Nurse were sloppily composed, of course; far from it. It's just that with the lack of Jim O'Rourke's lush production; Rather Ripped has a more tune-y feel than Sonic Nurse. This might or might not be better, depending on where you stand.

The presence of so much melody is nice on Rather Ripped, yeah, but it's way more same-y regarding the styles that are presented.

The songs are more concise, tuneful, stripped-down & far less jammy & more rockin' for the most part than those on Sonic Nurse.

Speaking of "jammy", Jams Run Free is the worst track on the album. It's no JC or even Side2Side. What A Waste is not too spectacular either & comes off like a filler track & waste of space. Or is weaker than the rest as well, but at least it's something new.

It might have been a bold experiment that benefited the overall result to have the album start off with Rats instead of Reena.

Sonic Nurse is the album that's their best since Washing Machine, but again, in the final analysis, I can't help but say good riddance to Jim.

Good Shit, yeah, that would have been cool. I like Rather Ripped as a title okay though. Do You Believe in Rapture? would have also worked as a title too. That song is one of the most original things they've done in such a long time. I wish it were longer. It's a great one & would have been worthy of a title track. In the end they shied away, but in a way, it would have suited the feel of the album.

Rather wretched.

Exactly! You could've gotten the same atmosphere...they just didn't need to be so repetitive and drawn out.

EVOL is a great example. Some great sounds and atmosphere, textures, layers, but done in a more direct and shorter period.

All I know is I have found myself listening to RATHER RIPPED way more than any SY release in the post-Washing Machine era SY after hearing the album for the first time.

It is much better, more direct and in the spirit of what SY is really about. Sonic Nurse was the best SY in the Jim O'Rouke era, but Rather Ripped hasn't even come out and it's already surpassed what Sonic Nurse had even become.

I think Rather Ripped may not connect as much to fans who got into SY after Washing Machine because it's not what those fans envision SY to be about. Like some here, they like the drawn out 7 minute SY songs. I love the 3-4 minute jams that are fierce, aggressive great guitar but melodic.

Less is more.

It was John of Patmos, not John the Baptist, that wrote the Book of Revelations. There is some debate about another author as well whose work got attributed to John of Patmos...

& No.

That part in Turquoise Boy goes into a noisefest straight outta Mote; the title is taken from a book about Navajos.
Sleepin' Around sounds lifted from VU's Foggy Notion.

I would be surprised if Sonic Youth doesn't play Neil Young's Bridge School Benefit with this material. Much of it comes off as written by Thurston on an acoustic as has been the case for the last few records & a good bit of the mostly straight-forward end product seems ideally suited to be adapted to acoustic guitars. Thurston's hand can be felt more than ever. The band will finally be able to play in Mountain View & not seem musically challenged.

Of course, most SY fans see them touring with Pearl Jam as a bad thing. I for one, think their eponymous album is one of their strongest since Vitalogy. Americana?

Of course I have heard GOO and Dirty. I have both of the deluxe editions as well as the originals. And there is noise on all albums! I know theat they have added a considerable amount of melody and pop songcraft to their work since their days as a No Wave band in the early 80's, but there is still noise freakouts and dissonance on a lot of their songs from almost all of their records. Te new album just doesn't please me. I'm not saying it's crap, I'm just saying it's sub par. The album feels rushed and thrown together. The band members spend so much time focusing on other things in theirlives (solo projects, side projects, small indie record labels, family) that the album just doesn' seem all that solid. It feels empty, hollow, and underdeveloped. but maybe it's just the way the album was mixed. I dont know, I wasnt around them while they were thinkning this stuff up. All I know is that in my opinion, Rather Ripped is one of the weaker albums Sonic Youth has ever made. It has the genesis of good musical ideas that fall flat. It's like the band wasn't trying all that hard to make a great album.

"It's like the band wasn't trying all that hard to make a great album."-kingcoffee

Ouch! That's a bit harsh, don't you think? Did you get into SY before or after Washing Machine came out?

A Thousand Leaves was their last real stroke of brilliance, though Murray Street had some awesome shit.

This album... sorry... if you pay $15 or whatever for this, you're doing a great injustice to about a million good bands with good albums that deserve that money even more..

like "cherubs"?(do you really like them?)

Though I totally disagree with you (except that ATL was a stroke of brilliance albeit not their last), you just reminded me of a great memory. It was the day I learned that Blink-182 had broken up. I was so pleased to hear that, which is mean, but for the sake of music it was necessary.

So...yeah...RR is great. :)

Case in point on later brilliance: Rain On Tin. Hip Priest, get my back on this one.

love is truely blind you saps, rather ripped is a crap record. it sounds like sonic youth are big fans of the killers now.

it's interesting to see that many of those who don't like the record are more aggressive about voicing their opinion, while a lot of those who are satisfied seem content to simply state what they think and why without exaggeration or name-calling.

i haven't heard much yet, but i expect i'll like it. i'm fairly hard to disappoint anyway.

I like it a lot. I miss the more experimental sy albums but I don't care. This is good for the most part and I think I'm at least satisified. I loved sonic nurse though and I think it is waaay better than rather ripped.

don't agree with this...i've always thought is a mature record, one of the most naive.... nurse was worse than murray street which i really loved.... if rather ripped is better than everything released since washing machine, which is a real masterpiece, it will be a great thing.
i'm tired of people saying everutime anew sy record comes out that sy are going to sell out soon, switch to pop or bullshits like that... WE KNOW THEIR INTEGRITY!!

I think it's funny when people talk about SY as an "experimental" band or that their music is "experimental".(hehehe)

They haven't done anything remotely experimental since 85.

ever heard any SYR records, son?

Oh, come one, they are far more experimental than any other popular rock band right now. Turn on the radio. Do you hear anything as edgy and experimental as SY? NO, you don't. So SY aren't as experimental as they were in the early 80's. That doesn't mean that they stil don't experiment with feedback and other techniques. I think you have to stop comparing their more structured alternative rock material to their early NO Wave stuff. It's very different. Experimental music doesn't necessarily mean extreme dissonance. It's just deviating from the norm of the pop rock scene.

And what does my getting into Sonic Youth before or after Washing Machine have to do with anything? The first song I heard by SY was KIll Yr. Idols about five years ago. I loved it. I then went on to Daydream Nation, which totally changed my perspective of alternative music. From there on I went chronologically starting with: EVOL, Sister, DN, Goo, Dirty, (I skipped Experimental, Jet Set, but I heard a few tracks which were pretty good), Washing Machine which I loved, NYC Ghosts and Flowers, Murry Street and Sonic Nurse. I loved them all. Some were better than others. But I loved them. I was totally into every record. Every record was uniquely different in it's own way. But they all had that same crazy SY vibe. But Rather Ripped just doesn't have it. It doesn't have that vibe. I really think that the band threw together an album becuz they dont have much time left on DGC.