Still booming
Band defies clichés and is still
a force on the rock music scene
Sonic Youth is an anomaly that stands out among the pack of "screamo" rock groups of today.
We're talking about a band that represents one of the high points of the mid-'80s-early '90s national indie scene. A band that has had the same basic lineup for 23 years. Most amazing of all, Sonic Youth has been with the same major label for 14 of those years and has never had anything close to a crossover hit single during its tenure there. And with its latest album, the band shows it can still play music of a vital and uncompromising nature.
Sonic Youth: "Corporate Ghost -- The Videos: 1990-2002" and "Sonic Nurse" Both Geffen
Sure, the band helped get Nirvana signed to its label back in the day, but grunge has come and gone, while Sonic Youth is still around and still doing what it does very well, which is to consistently mine that sometimes clangorous aesthetic born of the downtown New York City scene.
And there's been no ego blowups that have ever threatened the break up the band, either. Even with the recent addition of respected indie musician-producer Jim O'Rourke into the fold, his musical skills have only complemented the innate chemistry of the band's core members of Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley.
Overall, it's been pretty amazing what this band has been able to get away with while on the corporate dime.
Even after 20-plus years, Sonic Youth keeps on keepin' on.
With Sonic Youth's first major label album, "Goo," in 1990, not only did they do the requisite promotional clips for their breakout tracks, "Dirty Boots" and "Kool Thing" (Ranaldo comments that they were never cut out to be "an MTV band"), the members took it upon themselves to farm out the remainder of the album to artist friends to make their own video and film interpretations of the songs. It was an audacious move for Sonic Youth right out the Geffen gate, as the band made it known that it would freely exercise its total creative control clause in its contract.
ALL OF the "little films" leading up to 2002's "Murray Street" album have been compiled on the fine "Corporate Ghost" DVD. Besides the wide range of low- to high-budget films from the "Goo" video reel and afterwards, the DVD also includes band, director and contributor commentaries, an interview section called "Sonic Spiel," a photo montage taken by film director Spike Jonze (who got his start in the business co-directing and appearing in the video "100%") and a charming video fan letter called "My Sonic Room," made right after the release of "Goo."
There's a spirit of creative camaraderie found throughout the videos and interviews, with the band in a typically low-key, non-solipsistic mode. That's because everything they've done over the years has been in service to their music, working intuitively while remaining true to their aesthetic.
The members of Sonic Youth (from left, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore and Jim O'Rourke) all share a common history in indie music.
So the DVD compilation comes off as a scrapbook of pleasant memories: There are the two videos done in honor of the late Karen Carpenter, the hip-hop shoutout of "Kool Thing," the late Joe Cole lip-synching "My Friend Goo" with Kim Gordon in a friend's home, director Todd Haynes' noir-ish take on "Disappearer," a young Sofia Coppola vamping it up as Joan Crawford in "Mildred Pierce," an equally young Chloe Sevigny in "Sugar Kane," Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna at play in "Bull in the Heather" and Macauley Culkin's evocative appearance in "Sunday."
ALL OF THIS leads up to the recent release of Sonic Youth's 19th album "Sonic Nurse." Packaged in cover artist Richard Prince's series of nurse paintings based on pulp romance paperback covers, the 10 songs contained mark a partial return to the fearless experimentation of their earlier albums on the influential SST indie label.
On the best of these songs -- "Dripping Dream," "Stones" and "Paper Cup Exit" -- it's sheer joy to listen how well the band plays together, sharing an easy chemistry. They're master music and noise manipulators, switching back and forth between the gentle melodies and moments of droning noise and feedback with an assured confidence.
Gordon's raspy whisper of a vocal is back in the forefront, whether it be pointed and critical in tone in "Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream" (originally titled in an ironic way with Mariah Carey's name) or dreamy on "Dude Ranch Nurse" and "I Love You Golden Blue."
Her husband, Thurston Moore, rarely gets loud at all himself on the vocal level. "Unmade Bed," with its interesting mix of time signatures and tunings, is downright pretty thanks to Moore's singing. And his vocal takes a meditative turn in criticizing the Bush administration on "Peace Attack."
This is an easy album to get lost in, luxuriating in the sonic explorations of a band renewed in purpose.
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