Stereo Depravity

Sonic Youth are the most respected elder statesfolk in alt-rock.
Over the last 28 years—as both musicians and champions of great,
obscure bands—they’ve done more than most to improve the world’s
soundscape. SY guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo brought
unusual tunings and prepared axes to underground-rock
prominence—translating Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham’s
cacophonous clangor to the Coachapalooza masses—­while
writing songs (with help from core members Kim Gordon and Steve
Shelley) that stick in your head like feisty arguments. Within Sonic
Youth’s expansive sound world, avant-garde sensibilities commingle with
pop instincts in a manner rarely equaled. Who else has covered Takehisa
Kosugi and the Carpenters? Who else has collaborated with
Merzbow and Chuck D?

Below, I pinpoint the goldest of these avant-rock luminaries’ golden
sounds in order to supply you with what this OG fan thinks is the
ultimate Sonic Youth listening experience. Note: Tracks from Ciccone
Youth’s The Whitey Album were ineligible. The LP is currently
recovering from this slight in an undisclosed used-CD bin.

“Intro” (Bad Moon Rising): Odd
tintinnabulating and sighing guitars put you on tenterhooks for what’s
to come.

“The Burning Spear” (Sonic Youth): Here mainly
for Gordon’s most badass bass line, but Moore and Ranaldo’s guitar
klang and granular spray lay waste, too. SY’s first song on their debut
EP. Auspicious!

“Shadow of a Doubt” (EVOL): The epitome of the
Whispery Kim Song™, this is subliminal Lower East Side gamelan
that gives you shivers—until it explodes like a mass
murderer.

“Star Power” (EVOL): As bubblegum pop as SY
would ever get, save for their cover of Kim Fowley’s “Bubblegum.”
Seemed like a surefire hit to me in ’86, but, alas, the world wasn’t
ready for its foreboding, spine-chilling middle 8.

“Stereo Sanctity” (Sister): Lyrics inspired by
Philip K. Dick set to thrillingly urgent and caustic rock. It’s a
literary roller-coaster ride through a fucked-up cosmos.

“Starfield Road” (Experimental Jet Set, Trash and
No Star): Possesses some of SY’s most hair-raising guitar timbres.
Flares and slashes dangerously for 135 seconds and then exits before
you know what the hell happened to your clothes, which are in shreds on
the floor around you.

“Silver Rocket” (Daydream Nation): With its
punky, wound-too-tight guitar/bass surges, Moore’s bratty vocals, a
bridge that sounds like the Eiffel Tower ablaze, and Shelley’s speedy
timekeeping, this is the definitive template for a certain SY
composition that frequently recurred throughout their ’90s and ’00s
albums. Also: While Daydream Nation has been the consensus Best
SY Album since its 1988 issue, it strikes me as a bloated letdown
compared to the crackling, concise zenith of
Sister.

“Expressway to Yr Skull” (EVOL): A weird,
ebbing-and-flowing wallow in guitar eruption and drone. “We’re gonna
find the meaning of feeling good” apparently involves killing
California girls and firing exploding loads. Mansonic Youth, or
what?

“Hallowe’en” (Bad Moon Rising reissue): Gordon
deadpans in a stark stage whisper over an endearingly stumbling rhythm
and a sublimely chiming, vaguely exotic guitar figure. This song is an
irresistible temptress that seduces with minimal movement.

“Death Valley ’69” (Bad Moon Rising):
Unbelievably cinematic and dynamic, this cut screams out of the gate
and takes you on a careening joyride to the desert. Fox fatale Lydia
Lunch and Moore trade off lines about a doomed encounter, but the
fearsomely ululating guitars are the real stars. Gordon’s baleful bass
line condemns the scenario.

“Pacific Coast Highway” (Sister): “PCH” starts
all road-rage-y and rife with unbearable tension, as Gordon demands,
“Come on, get in the car!/Let’s go for a ride somewhere.” But the shift
in tone that occurs at 1:12 marks one of the greatest changes in SY’s
vast canon. The motif in the song’s pacific part sounds like a whale
orgasm (a great thing). “PCH” eventually returns to its original
roiling state as it roars toward the vanishing point—an
exhausting conclusion that has you choking on auto
exhaust.

“Society Is a Hole” (Bad Moon Rising): Guitars
toll like bells of doom for humanity and evoke automatons rusting in
the distance as Moore numbly bemoans the grim state of things and his
life. “We’re living in pieces/I want to live in peace” sums up this
song’s fathoms-deep poignancy.

“Kotton Krown” (Sister): Containing SY’s most
woozily beautiful melody, this quasi ballad gradually intensifies into
a fireball of coruscating guitar tones. “We’re gonna take control of
the chemistry/We’re gonna manifest the mystery,” Moore and Gordon sing
in near-unison, as if under a seductive spell. This tune strikes me as
an idealization of married-rocker artistic bonding. They also make the
line “I’m wasted in time and I’m looking everywhere” sound like the
ultimate romantic experience.

“Total Trash” (Daydream Nation): Epic, full of
dramatic changes and some of da Yoof’s fuzziest and densest guitar
textures, and boasting a lovely seesawing melody, this is Daydream
Nation‘s peak.

“Karen Revisited” (Murray Street): We need a
Ranaldo choon; this 11-minute monster jam exemplifies his sprawling
guitar calligraphy—and deemphasizes his iffy Beat
poetry.

“Inhuman” (Confusion Is Sex): Captures the raw
terror and excitement of what I thought early-’80s Manhattan was all
about. An impure speed trip.

“100%” (Dirty): Included for shoving
tuff-gnarly guitar textures into bland MTVland—and for its
overall raunchiness.

“Making the Nature Scene” (Confusion Is Sex):
Wiry no-wave tribal dub with Gordon sternly lecturing about urban
decadence. Unique.

“Anti-Orgasm” (The Eternal): Newest SY LP
The Eternal is one of their better post-Sister efforts:
no towering peaks, but no duds, either. “Anti-Orgasm” finds SY
recapitulating their compelling synthesis of pop catchiness, indelible
riffs, chaotic dissonance, and eerily pretty codas, evoking their early
masterpieces.

“Wildflower Soul” (A Thousand Leaves): Let’s
end this with an awe-inspiring opus. All of the grandiloquent guitar
riffs inspire tears of wonder on this, SY’s most heart-wrenchingly
gorgeous song.