[nowideau]

The best car-driving music disc I own and some of the greatest tracks SY ever put out. To me this is their "minimalist" disc , where they push the minimalist impulses of most rock/verse-chorus-verse/pop music beyond the popular music format towards the classical music form of minimalism as defined by composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Consider Wildflower Soul, where an overpowering guitar riff is repeated over and over. At first it rocks in the conventional form, begins to annoy, but after a while ascends the listener to a sort of meditational state, much the same effect as Glass' Einstein on the Beach or most of Merzbow's output.
Hoarfrost and Karen Koltrane also spring to mind, the former nice and gentle, while Coltrane chews and erodes your speakers. Both contain the repetions mentioned above and, due to the stretched, unconventional (un-pop song like) compositional form, move out of "song" realm and become "compositions" in the classical minimalist sense of the word.

Sonic Youth even acknowledge this trend away from song-form. In the linear notes, they credit the tracks as "compositions", rather than songs. The latter crediting featured in the linear notes of Goo, where their music purposefully aspired towards more concise "songs", leaving aside most minimalist, drone tendencies found on DDN.

I remember reading a negative review of some Youth album years ago, the critic complaining about how the Sonics had never expanded their instrumental experimentation of choice beyond guitars. A Thousand Leaves proves that that criticism, factually inaccurate anyway, is irrelevant, because vast sections of A Thousand Leaves sound NOTHING like stringed instruments anyway, especially Karen Koltrane's intense, mid-song jams.

One thing I hate about the album are the Kim songs. The Ineffable Me is a nice little rant, but a throwaway next to the gargantuine tracks (Hits of Sunshine, Karen Koltrane, Wildflower Soul). Contre Le Sexisme is curious, and rewards repeated listens. It's mixed to give a sense of shifting depth, some sounds appearing clearly in view, others little more than a haze on the horizon, and slowly moves the sounds around, bringing some in to focus, others out. But as a prelude of sorts (it never develops as a song of its own, was never really performed live and moves right into Sunday), it's pretty weak. It's almost like music played just before SY blast out live, amplifying the moment when they actually begin to play, in this case, Sunday, the one conventional song on the album, which is absolutely amazing and the one truly conventional rock song on the album.

French Tickler has one great vocal hook: "I feel combustible, that's my will...". The rest of the song bores. Female Mechanic suffers a similar sort of, going nowhere repetition in the vocal line, but at least there's plenty of mangled noise guitar to tune in to over the Kim's tired singing, and the second half of the song, where everything is soft and autumny, is great(most of the album has an autumny feel, but that's probably just the album name brainwashing me). Even though it sounds uninspired compared to the later extended jams on tracks like Wildflower Soul and Hits of Sunshine, it shines brightly compared to the slog that makes up the first half of the song.