Ever since I took on this project for New Year’s Eve, I’ve been
\ndiscovering in the Pierce Archives many records, tapes and CDs that
\nI bought for no specific reason. Sometimes, I didn’t know the group
\n– hell, sometimes, I didn’t like the group – yet here, collecting
\ndust, are the purchases that I can no longer explain.<\/p>\n
Exhibit “S”: Sonic Youth, whose work I was first exposed to in
\ncollege radio via the single “Kool Thing”. And after my first
\ntaste, I decided I wasn’t particularly fond of Thurston Moore and
\ncrew. Yet, while digging up some choice nuggets for this project,
\nthere sat their 1992 album
\nDirty<\/i> – whatever made me decide to buy this in the first
\nplace?<\/p>\n
It’s probably been a good five years since I last listened to
\nthis tape, but the time away from it has helped to sharpen my
\ntastes towards what Sonic Youth have been trying to do with their
\nmusic. With producer Butch Vig behind the controls (the first time
\nSonic Youth used an outside producer),
\nDirty<\/i> proves itself to be an interesting, if not a tad
\nconfusing, listen.<\/p>\n
While there is still quite a bit of ambient noise that makes up
\nSonic Youth’s music, they now show they’re not afraid to craft a
\ntune with – egads! – chordal structure. (It sounds for the most
\npart like guitarists Lee Ranaldo and Moore aren’t doing as many
\nexperimentations with alternate tunings – though there still are
\nsome weird sounds on
\nDirty<\/i>.)<\/p>\n
Tracks like “100%,” “Drunken Butterfly,” “Sugar Kane” and
\n“Shoot” all show quite a bit of musical maturity among Sonic Youth
\n(Ranaldo, Moore, bassist Kim Gordon and drummer Steve Shelley).
\nAdmittedly, Sonic Youth’s style has to grow on the listener – and
\nit’s not always the easiest process to go through. But the effort
\nproves to be worth it in the end. Before you know it, you’ll be
\nenjoying tracks like “Orange Rolls, Angel’s Spit” and “On The
\nStrip,” even if you don’t quite grasp what these songs are supposed
\nto be about.<\/p>\n
The only real difficulty with
\nDirty<\/i> is that you have to really be paying attention to the
\ntrack listing and what’s happening on the album; otherwise, it’s
\nreal easy to get lost in this album. Once you lose your footing,
\nit’s real hard to figure out when you reach the track “Creme
\nBrulee” until the song ends and silence again overtakes the
\nroom.<\/p>\n
To the purists,
\nDirty<\/i> might be seen as a rejection of everything that Sonic
\nYouth had worked towards in the early part of their career. I would
\nrespectfully disagree, and argue that the music, while different,
\nis a natural progression for the band. It’s not so much an
\nembracing of more conventional music than a discovery that their
\ntonal experimentation can fit into the structure of more
\nconventional alternative rock.<\/p>\n
\nDirty<\/i> is an album that took six years for me to enjoy, but I
\nthink now I’m more prone to picking up other Sonic Youth albums –
\nand this time, I’ll know why I’m buying them in the first
\nplace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6054],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-36134","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-sonic-youth","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36134"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36134"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}