Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Derek
I remember coming back here to say that Sonic Youth's peak was in the 80s and someone posted that they had "five different peaks" and named Sonic Nurse as one of the reasons why the mid 2000s were a peak for them. Why any band would have five different peaks of their career is beyond me. I dunno, a lot of later Sonic Youth just sounds so uncreative to me now. The 80s records encapsulate a moment, sound, mood, idea etc. and ride it out to its full potential. They lost that starting with Goo.
|
I can see the multiple peaks thing, if you're active for 28ish years and still try to make new stuff each time you end up with a discography more like a mountain range than a straight up and down peak & trough.
Nurse, RR and Eternal are definitely where they were *just* sounding like SY though. Nurse was "remember them groovy extended jams from DN? then you'll love this!". It was safe, but lovely and textured and the jams were sweet and pure if not fresh. RR I love deeply and will fight you on the playing field after school to defend its honour, but is undoubtedly safer again. I just love the songs, it's the shiny pop record that Jet Set was claimed to be but wasn't. The Eternal was a sad end, all the joy and love was gone, makes sense in the wider context of Kim/Thurston and all that but it really was dire and is the only actually *bad* main sequence LP for me.
Even though the song-based proper Albums You Might Actually Find In A Shop played it safe, the SYRs/extra-curricular stuff was still pushing, 8 with Merzbow and then 9 for that French movie soundtrack were an interesting if not entirely successful new direction and utterly excellent respectively.