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Originally Posted by Rob Instigator
yes yes yes yes
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This album was part of my Sonic revival, not just chronologically because it came after ATL, but because in the brief interlude between ATL and NYC Ghosts & Flowers I lost my Sonic way and got caught up in punk and hardcore. Then my girlfriend bought me this disc for my birthday, I think in 2002. Shit. She thought I wouldn't like it because of all the spoken-word style and experimental styles, but quite the opposite, I was mesmerized, hypnotized into submission. I just didn't realize music could at once be (a) so beautiful and yet (b) so weird and yet (c) so delightfully bewildering. ATL was a mystical adventure to be sure, but it seemed to be less free-associative as NYC Ghosts&Flowers was.
Three things directly inspired my to pick up the guitar and create.
The first is the 1990s Nirvana Book of Tab, which was so fucking great its unbelievable. I didn't even own a guitar, I had an ergonomic wrist guard for my computer keyboard which was the same size as a fretboard, and I practiced the chords and fingerings on that in between those rare moments I had access to an actual guitar.
The second was NYC Ghosts and Flowers, because I was so inspired by the idea of experimenting subtly with a blend of feedback and yet intricate patterns and structures.
The final push was when I saw
Shannon Wright play essentially a blend of Sonic Youth experimentation and feedback improv with the angst and edge of Nirvana. What was more important than just her sound, was that she was a two-piece, just guitar and drums. I never in a million years would have believed anyone would have even took a two-piece (white stripes aside) seriously until that moment of convergence at her show in the end of 2002. I had that epiphany of, "I can do that. I WANT to do that."
Ever since for better or worse I have been attached to the two-piece format, guitar and drums. To be sure, Sleater-Kinney helped me stay confident that you don't need a bass as a rhythmic foundation, but what motivated me perpetually was that drive to experiment like Sonic Youth and to keep it going like Shannon Wright.
I skipped Murray Street because I didn't really dig it, but when Sonic Nurse came out, that was a watershed moment for me. Sonic Nurse is still perhaps my all-time favorite stand alone album because of all the combined experiences associated with that album. Thank you Sonic Youth, we love you more than you can realize in our short lifetimes on this planet called Earf..