Like many great bands, Sonic Youth went through several different, distinct phases of “style” during their career. In their beginning, in early-’80s New York City, the band was staunchly devoted to “noise rock,” an expansive and generally unapproachable permutation of punk rock which emphasizes guitar feedback as a de facto “instrument” in itself. The movement also allowed for long, stretchy song structures, which the band would take and tailor to perfection on their most important material, their fifth album Daydream Nation (1988).
Then, almost knowing innately that they’d taken that musical phenomenon to the pinnacle of its potential, they steered the ship in a new direction, following, with what in my opinion a couple of mediocre attempts at radio accessibility, Goo (1990) and Dirty (1992). Truth be told, then, Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star (1994) [1] offers some pretty original, heady grunge rock, almost like another mini-phase of the band’s, and again, interestingly enough, so short-lived perhaps on account of insecurity of their ability to outdo it.
What we have next with this band, upon a decent amount of commercial success and a prolonged residency on Geffen Records, hence probably allowing for a sufficient studio budget, is the routine but nonetheless pleasing habit of just settling to an alternative rock band, as we might already know it. Washing Machine (1995) is a scattered but generally listenable and interesting effort on which, in my opinion, we get a newfound emphasis placed on singles, by the band, or individual songs catering to a sort of appeal that seems to outmode the album as a whole they call their own. The most obvious of these classic anthems on Washing Machine would be “Unwind”; a trippy, celestial and unreal tune that may owe a slight debt to Yo La Tengo in style, but not much, with every bit the serene majesty that Ira Kaplan and company tend to foment up at their finest moments.
Songwriting plurality is another thing that made this band great, anyway, and a certain Lee Ronaldo number, “Saucer-Like”; takes this technique to its most gratifying realm. True to form, this creation of the band’s auxiliary guitarist and occasional-vocalist saunters along with chords that are half-pleasant and half-ominous, letting a spooky, trippy vibe leave things, likely, too dark and offbeat for radio. Midway through, in his expert technique of painting vivid, emotional scenes with his lyrics, Ronaldo quips that “You’ve got your head in the clouds / If that’s the way you’re feeling / It’s not good or bad / Channels of thought revealing / Some things we all had”. It’s like an anthem of indecision, in a sense: sometimes in life when I get a great feeling of uncertainty, like I don’t know the next direction I want to go in or even what I want to do with the rest of my day, this song enters my head as an active motif, like a new ideal for the power of rock lyrics soundtracking someone’s inner reality.
So in calling Sonic Youth the best “alternative rock” band of all time, which I indeed attempt to do here in this post, it will behoove me to illustrate that “Turquoise Boy”; a blissed-out, hazy pop number from Rather Ripped (2006), actually seemed to materialize in my mind as a central artistic figure for when I decided, adamantly, that I could be a high school teacher, if I wanted, which I believe was when I was walking around on my canvassing/field managing/program directing activism job in Colorado in the summer of 2007. It was like I’d come to a precipice, from which I saw the whole reality of the situation in front of me, and this song just seemed to emanate from my psyche, like a sort of ultimate guidepost of the type of thing I’d like to embody in this trade. The second best alt-rock band in history, in my opinion, would be Pearl Jam, but their finest moments like “Alive” and “Dissident” don’t offer this much sonic undulation and flair, and I chose not to refer to the band as “indie,” as they sometimes are, because they were on Geffen for this whole time. So to have epitomized greatness in “noise rock” and “alternative rock,” both, they reach a sort of Beatles-caliber level of accomplishment, mirroring the latter’s premiere status in oldies pop (“Penny Lane”; arguably) and psychedelic rock (“Across the Universe”; non-arguably).
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[1] This curious album title is in my opinion likely the result of a brainstorming session in which they offered each individual component: “experimental jet set,” “trash” and “no star” as possible, separate names for the new album, before stumbling on the bizarre and funny idea of just combining them all into one.
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