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these reassessing threads seem to be dividing opinion but, I dunno. I'm enjoying this whole listening back process and seeing as there's no law that people have to read them, let alone post on them, what the hell. I'm only gonna do studio albums and consider CIS their first (Sonic Youth is more of an EP I suppose) Anyway ... like it or not...
here goes...
1. She's in a Bad Mood. Starts out and it's just pure night-time. For a band so associated with the city, this has a kind of rural feel. Like a camp-fire in the woods or something. Very Blair Witch. One of the blackest of opening tunes.
2. Protect Me You. Carrying on the forest-at-night theme, this introduces the whole KG 'little girl lost' theme that would be so big later in the band's career. The guitars sound like bits of metal hanging from trees, like electric wind-chimes or something.
3. Freezer Burn/I Wanna Be Your Dog. The Freezer Burn section starts out like the music used at the beginning of Eraserhead but could equally be for some gothic American horror film. And then its a leap from the woods to the city with their cover of I Wanna Be Yr Dog which seems to have reduced the original to just this howl. Kim's 'well come on' is one of the most inhuman sounds in rawk. Amazing.
4. Shaking Hell. Musically we're back in Blair Witch territory, but now it's used as more of a vehicle for Kim's vocals that, when she repeats 'shake' (another Stooges reference) it's as though she's boiling the whole Detroit punk sound down into this eerie black goo.
5. Inhuman. This is positively up beat compared with what's just taken place. The guitars have more space to, for want of a better word, 'rock'. Thurston's vocals, almost entirely submerged in the mix, can't compete with Kim's primal howl, but this lays out a template of punk nihilism that later bands like Pussy Galore would, at least in their early day, pick up on heavily.
6. The World Looks Red. Given that this was co-written by arch miserablist Michael Gira, it's surprisingly the most up beat song on the album so far. Jesus, it even has what might loosely be described as a guitar solo. Still, it's about as far away from Sweet Home Alabama as you'll get.
7. Confusion is Next. If i'd never actually heard Anarchy in the UK and just read about it, in my head this might be how I'd imagine it to sound. Staggeringly good.
8. Making the Nature Scene. A sort of funk-rap effort that roots them to the NY underground more obviously than anything else on offer here. Even so, those chiming guitars are still drawing more from the forest than they are the subway.
9. Lee is Free. A more freeform solo guitar effort that finally sees the band abandon any direct link to rock altogether. The point in the middle though where that chiming sound locks into its own groove of sorts suggests more interesting soundscapes to come.
The fact that the first album by a band so closely linked with NYC sounds like it was recorded deep in a forest in Ohio is irony itself. SY may (arguably) go on to make more 'complete' albums, but as a statement of intent, CIS is surely one of the most bloody-minded in the history of rock. A masterpiece debut to place alongside Unknown Pleasures, The Stooges, Psychocandy or Live at the Witch Trials.
I won't do any more of the pre-Geffen albums though. I've listened to them too many times to be able to really 'reassess' them, as such. Unlike all the others, this one was a bit of a chore to do, to be honest.
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