Something 4 The Weekend # 43

I've been in several bands over the years, most of them Punk, Metal, or some combination of the two, and all of 'em were loud. Still, I blame Sonic Youth for the slight ringing in my left ear and the migraines I get from time to time.

I don't know what year it was (late '80's/early '90's), and what album they were touring, but one of the six or seven times I've seen Sonic Youth over the years was in a small cafeteria at UW-Milwaukee. The ceiling was 15, maybe 20, feet high, and I was about ten feet from the stage, with a wall of PA speakers, stacked floor to ceiling, extending out into the crowd on both sides of the "pit". It was the single loudest, scuzziest, feedbackingest show I've ever witnessed, and revealed every last one of my Punk Metal bands to be nothing but soft and tender wannabes.

It can sometimes be easy to hear Sonic Youth as little more that a loud, scuzzy, feedback-laden noise band, and unfortunately, that short-sightedness makes one miss the most essential element of their music, and that is the supreme melodicism that lurks just under the surface of all that scuzziness and feedback. Not all the time, but alot of the time, Sonic Youth, to put it simply, write and play beautiful music.

Thurston Moore: Trees Outside The Academy: "The Shape Is In A Trance"

Thurston Moore recently released his second solo album, and what's coolest about this recording, I believe, is that in it's gentler, softer sounds, once can still hear the essence of Sonic Youth, but stripped of the scuzz and feedback, one is able to fully hear and appreciate the beauty that has been the true heart of Thurston's band from the start, or at least since their Bad Moon Rising album.

Hotcha! Hank