it's my favourite sy album. it was the first one i bought and i got it at the lowest moment of my life (so far - go homer!). maybe you've got to be incredibly low, introspective and open to connect with it. anyway, i got it out of a second hand shop for £3 or something, in mint condition with the postcards still inside - an absolute steal. it's so underrated. i even had the audacity to be disappointed when i bought my next sy album - bad moon rising. i took it back to the shop and traded it for washing machine in the end, but that's another story.
like someone said before - skink and starfield road are outstanding tracks, two of their best. the apex of kims career is skink, i think. i get the feeling that everything before this was a truncated offering on her part. in the experimental context of the album she finally put down a track as playgroundy as she wanted to. it's a beautiful piece of honesty. it's tender, you can't help but fall in love with her. she doesn't have to pretend she had balls the size of grapefruits, she doesn't need to grunt her confrontation with you - she's at her most open, beautiful and tonally articulate.
lyrically the album may not be great, but at least it's not cliché. i'm all for 'bad' poetry as long as it is playful and fun. you know, the meter and rhythm and all those other pieces of poetic-jargon crap are FANTASTIC on this album, i think people must object to the words themselves and the nonsensicalness of it all. they were having fun, doing what sonic youth do best - making cool sounds. it's a lyrical jam, no pretension of meaning or substance - just kick-arse sounds conveying the strongest emotional stuff sy have ever done, in my ever so humble opinion. the words don't so much tell a story as create an environment, an environment you can certainly pull meaning from. they're jazzy, in an ageless way (not classic, just free and childlike).
if starfield road was 10 minutes long it would be one of their masterpieces. the abruptness of its ending is one of my only disappointments on this album (apart from androgynous mind, which sounds like a throwaway from thurstons solo album). it reminds me, in so many ways, of mildred pierce. although, having heard the extended version of that, maybe it is better that they cut starfield road so abruptly.
bugger it. watch this.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AOkRCPgfUVY
get mozilla, get unplug plugin, unplug this, download flv converter, convert it into your preferred format, stick it on your video ipod, watch it every morning on the train to work surrounded by hundreds of people. see if you notice them at all.
the people wondering if AM is about cobain - you know, i can't say why, but i've always thought a good part of the album was about cobain, especially AM. never heard anyone make reference to it before so it's nice to know others have that feeling too.