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bbc6:
Sonic Youth’s 21st
Frontman Thurston Moore says new album is 'immediate' and 'raw'
23 January 2009 - Their last album was Rather Ripped in 2006 and the legendary American band Sonic Youth are back in '09, with their twenty first album.
The Eternal is scheduled for release in June and they’ve been working with producer John Agnello - who has worked with the likes of Patti Smith, Aerosmith and The Hold Steady - and mixed their previous record.
As for what stage they’re at, frontman Thurston Moore told 6 Music from the US: “We just finished everything that we had to do yesterday and today we go in and start mixing from the ground up.”
The Sonic Youth singer and guitarist explained the album name came about after he had been listening to a lot of black metal music and then said it as a joke in an interview.
“The rest of the band said I read this interview where you said our record’s called The Eternal and that’s ridiculous,” he explained. “Then we started thinking about it and thought, if we haven’t broken up as a band then I guess it’s impossible for us to do, unless someone dies.”
And laughingly added: “So, we just called it The Eternal because I guess we’re gonna do this eternally.”
‘Nancy-Lee way’
As for what the album has in store for fans, Thurston Moore said the album is more “immediate”.
He said: “I think a lot of that had to do with just getting together for a weekend and banging out a couple of songs we had ideas for and then going straight away into the studio and recording them.”
The singer also revealed The Eternal sees the band do more collaborative singing.
“One of the things that we did more so than "They are definitely more of the moment and they have definitely a more positive energy to them."
Thurston Moore
ever was we sang together on different tracks."They are definitely more of the moment and they have definitely a more positive energy to them."
Thurston Moore
“Lee [Ranaldo]and I sing lines together, me and Kim [Gordon] sing together on a few lines, or we trade off lines in a very Nancy Sinatra, Lee Hazlewood kind of way.”
Speaking about the album's stripped down sound, Moore said the album's not overly produced.
“There’s not a whole lot of overly orchestrated over dubs happening on the album,” he revealed. “It’s fairly raw, but the songs are typical Sonic Youth songs. They are definitely more of the moment and they have definitely a more positive energy to them.”
A new producer
In 2005, producer and Sonic Youth member Jim O’Rourke left the band to pursue a career as a film director and Thurston Moore says it was only then that they needed to find someone to help them with production duties.
“Because we had Jim O’Rourke in the band and he was a great mix engineer,” Moore explained, “We didn’t need to go outside and find anybody because we had this vanguard producer in the band, but since he departed we were curious to work with somebody.
“We reached out to him [John Agnello] and the last record, Rather Ripped, he was great to work with, so we had no question about who we wanted to work with this time round.”
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