I think Sonic Youth faithfuls are very lucky indeed. Those of us who really love all eras of the band have an almost unparalleled (in the rock world) and totally massive body of work to dig into and feast upon. Few bands get around to releasing as many albums as SY did, let alone great albums, and that's not even taking all the EPs, SYRs, collaborative albums and solo works.
It's not a Dinosaur Jr kind of situation, where the band existed at its best for a few meager years before turning into a caricature of itself for a decade and a half, only to
kind of return with some albums that are better than the the worst Dino, but ultimately just sound like lesser rehashings of "classic" Dino. We're much more lucky than, say, Nirvana diehards. I love Nirvana, but if they were my favorite band I'd be frustrated as all hell. Three proper LP's, that's it. Can you imagine? We're absolutely rich by comparison.
Yeah, I was fortunate enough to see them play, but that was a lifetime ago. The memory is not enough.
SY didn't have on-again off-again band dynamics. They were the best version of themselves for decades, and we're still getting caught up with the their archives. They had enough power and sonic diversity over the course of their run of LP's that it's very hard to get sick of any one album or period, let alone the band itself.
Guided By Voices may have a bigger catalogue, but it's also mind numbingly redundant. Flaming Lips may approach Sonic Youth's diversity and lifespan, but they had a few major flops along the way, and now they seem to be a bit stuck. Even the Beatles, whose catalog rivals Sonic Youth's, spent the first quarter of their career playing pretty bland stuff, and didn't get interesting until they were halfway done.
SY is a behemoth. It's awesome that we can have a five page discussion about two albums released in succession that are so completely and utterly different in sound and scope. It's all fucking brilliant though. We're really rather spoiled if you think about it.
