C/D: Sonic Youth's GOO

(those 8-track demos and live versions that appeared on, er, boy I can't remember what EPs around the same time were alright though)

Also:

Dirty Boots!

Dirty Boots baybeeee!

production = piss poor duddy dud

pettibon cover art = classic

search: goo demos.

cover's ace too, although isn't it something to do
with myra hindley or did i dream that ?

If anyone hears it and feels disappointed just be glad you weren't a silly bastard like me and shelled out SIXTEEN FUCKING QUID for Thurston Moore's "Psychic Hearts", possibly the worst album I've ever heard. Any other Youth related project sounds ace to me now as a result.

sundar- wasn't DN remastered? i never got holf of it. if you have can you tell me what do you think of it. thanks.

again. I love daydream and sister and Goo is beautiful rec but I can't rank 'em really. i have seen SY live so I don't know how diff the songs on DN are.

I can't haven't been able to get into their last three albums at all and haven't even bothered with the new one, although I would check them out live if they ever decided to play some place in the midwest again, which they haven't forever.

The thing that is such a let down on later Sonic Youth is that their music sounds lethargic and doesn't have the same energy coming up from the drums. For a couple of years Steve Shelley was tapping into some Keith Moon freakbeatery that was awesome, now the drums just don't have that kind of drive.

kim always has done great vocals. i can't remmeber 'tunic' but she's always been exceptional as a rock n' roll singer.

I really like the 'video album' (or whatever they're called) that SY made for 'Goo'.

With all due respect, Julio, I sincerenly think you're mistaken, or at least when it comes to this track. Dig it out and listen again, then let's discuss. I think it's absolutely vile.

I reread Kim's Spin interview with L.L. Cool J, which inspired the song, and I'm still like, What did he do to deserve this? Their best vid was "Beauty Is in the Eye"...

I like chuck's bit on 'kool thing' too. they are now on a major label and they can get chuck D to guest on a track. I never got the 'down with the kids' thing at all nicole.

Its a good rec.

What's right with it?

In all seriousness, it's less an example of "singing" and more of a recitation. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that part of it, but Gordon's lifelessly deadpan delivery, coupled with what I consider to be a rather churlishly contrived narrative (ooh, look, I'm eulogizing soft-rock demi-goddess Karen Carpenter in a relatively shallow way...am I being ironic? You decide!) renders the whole thing embarassing and unlistenable.

when I listen to music I listen to sound. I find it very hard to concentrate on the lyrics (so I didn't know what it was abt).

''again. I love daydream and sister and Goo is beautiful rec but I can't rank 'em really. i have seen SY live so I don't know how diff the songs on DN are.''

that should be ''haven't'' seen SY live.

Can you walk and chew gum at the same time, Julio?

it's not ironic, i don't think: KC wz a good singer and hers wz a sad story

Inarguably, but I don't feel said story was presented in a necessarily sincere manner in "Tunic." I'm not suggesting that Kim Gordon was intentioally MOCKING Karen Carpenter, but to address this issue so blithely ("you look so underfed") and then augment the story with the most tired cliché in the book (that Karen Carpenter is in heaven and has made friends with fellow dead rock stars and formed a band) is beyond trite. That I find it irritatingly distasteful has less to do with any reverance for the Carpenters and more to do with my disgust at Sonic Youth's pretentiousness.

xxxp Lou rules, and would've hated anything inspired by J Mascis (for President). i think i bought Daydream Nation and Bug on the same trip to the record store.

i was a megafan and superstoked when DN came out, also being way into acid and sci-fi at the time. our band is cyberpunk rock

one of the coolest things about DN is the rainforest drone before Hey Joni kicks in

Lou Barlow would say that, because he has never written a good song . (Sorry I hate him and Sebadoh)

eh, I think he's written a bunch of great songs, and while I disagree with him over DN I can see his point - it's definitely a jumping off point, if your thing was the no wave/industrial clank of, say, BMR.

I posted in the Dirty thread that "Theresa's Sound-World" is my favorite SY let's-bask-in-pretty-sounds-for-its-own-sake moment.

Absolutely. And totally overdriven, eardrum-poppingly-loud pretty sounds. The big crescendos on that (and Wish Fulfilment, tbh) always make me think of that apocryphal story, of the pigeon that flew in front of the insanely loud speakers at some 1970s festival Alice Cooper were playing, and the bird just exploded due to the volume of the sound (IANAS but I don't think that's actually possible) and sometimes I think that's how I'd like to go.

while there is some Sonic Youth I like more than other Sonic Youth, there is probably no Sonic Youth I hate

this is absolutely me, and also the records I like most and least shift place in the line-up all the time.

Dirty is a brilliant dumb rock record with a brilliant smart rock record hiding within the din.

I like that people have such varying takes on SY but my favourites have remained pretty fixed for a while now - DN and EVOL at the top; Dirty and Goo would be next after those. I suppose I like them best when they do pretty or blissed-out, or when the noisiness is contained within something that rocks in a relatively conventional way.

I don't hate any of their proper albums (I do hate the Master-Dik EP) and the ones I like least are not especially controversial choices I don't think (NYC G&F, Experimental Jet Set, maybe The Eternal).

I would say that Goo has the best drum sound since EVOL - that muffled sound on Sister or the biscuit tin snare on Daydream aren’t great imo

full admit that i have never listened to Rather Ripped or The Eternal because I hated Sonic Nurse so much… i should probably resolve that.

RR is the even catchier version of Sonic Nurse, my album of 2004 and still one of my benchmarks for a band 20+ years out recording essential music.

yeah so i will listen but with some reservations because that sounds exactly like what i hated about Sonic Nurse.

If Dirty and Experimental Jetset.... didn't work for you, then Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped might sound like updates toughened by a decade of experiments.

Experimental Jet Set is actually in my top 5 SY albums.

Sonic Youth brings out the freaks, that's all I'm gonna say.

full admit that i have never listened to Rather Ripped or The Eternal because I hated Sonic Nurse so much…

Rather Ripped is fantastic - Sonic Youth recording a pop album at the exact moment their deal with Geffen ended.

Experimental Jet Set is actually in my top 5 SY albums.

That makes two of us.

what is hateable about Sonic Nurse, I don't get it

Sonic Youth recording a pop album

An indie album, you mean. These songs are as bland as fucking REM.

REM are great

Sonic Nurse is Top 5 for me. On the right day, it's my favorite.

Yeah I love Sonic Nurse (and Murray Street and Rather Ripped, they were on a good run there).

imo they never put out a bad "proper studio LP", well idk about The Eternal (need to relisten there) but everything else is good-to-great

The Eternal is by no means bad, but it feels a little bereft of any new ideas — if they'd stayed together, they might've started heading in some other directions. I remember that stuff sounding good live.

RR has that rapture song which I love unconditionally, peak Thurston. plus Lee doing "Rats"

The Eternal is by no means bad, but it feels a little bereft of any new ideas — if they'd stayed together, they might've started heading in some other directions. I remember that stuff sounding good live.

Yeah, this is where I'm at with it as well. Anti-Orgasm was crazy exciting - but there didn't seem to be a concept or sound they were pursuing, whereas a lot of the later Geffen LPs were pretty brave stylistic shifts (the jammy, discursive Murray Street, the tight, songraft-y Rather Ripped, which IIRC was inspired by Coco's love of the Friends theme tune, etc). The Eternal felt like a holding pattern record, and I remember liking a lot of it, but I don't find myself going back to it much.

I like The Eternal a lot. It did seem like something of a transitional album at the time, which I usually find kind of exciting. Too bad the transition was the end of the band.

Sonic Nurse is Top 5 for me. On the right day, it's my favorite.

― Blood On The Knobs, Tuesday, July 1, 2025 12:23 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i guess i listened to it like ten times when it came out, then sold the CD because i loathed it. another to revisit— maybe my early 20something self was on some other shit!

(i do distinctly remember that this was the summer that i was getting really, really into American Primitive stuff and the "new weird America" vein of music, so i might have just been too Animal Collective- and Kottke-pilled at the time to find a rock band very exciting.)

(also the summer where i listened to On the Beach every day)

Nurse feels like a strong follow-up to Murray St to me, perhaps a little weirder but still in that jammy, melodic envelope. Esp loved Unmade Bed (melancholic rocker that might've slipped onto Ragged Glory), whatever they ended up titling the song about Mariah Carey's breakdown and the closing Peace Attack, which is just lovely.

Weird thing is I loved a lot of Nurse but looking at the song titles now I couldn't whistle half of them to you with a gun to my head. Not that the songs aren't strong, they just aren't particularly connected to the song titles in my head.

LOL @ Kottke-pilled!

(also the summer where i listened to On the Beach every day)

backed. hope you had some honey slides to go with it.

Nurse feels like a strong follow-up to Murray St to me, perhaps a little weirder but still in that jammy, melodic envelope.

Absolutely. It's also benefits from such a great, dreamy production. It's a very unique record in their catalog. Washing Machine is my favorite -- Sonic Nurse is adjacent to that record's pastoral weirdness.

Thurston, Kim, and Lee were definitely hip to the New Weird America. They wer hanging with Wooden Wand, Sunburned Hand of the Man, etc. Witchy Massachusetts...

Oh totally, but I couldn't hear it in the records in the way that I wanted, at the time. I am downloading them/looking manically through my boxes of CDs lol.

the pigeon that flew in front of the insanely loud speakers at some 1970s festival Alice Cooper were playing

I thought this was Blue Cheer and a dog

Okay, so obviously there's a thread for it, but since the discussion has been happening here, I want to talk about it here.

I actually remembered much of Murray Street, including the funny little phrasing that happens when Thurston sings "the secret Mona Lisa hides behind her smile." It's a nice album.

Listening to Sonic Nurse, I think that I just think it's too chill. It sounds like SY on a bongrip and half a Xanny bar— so while the songs themselves are nice enough, it has little of the punk aggression that made me fall in love with SY in the first place.

(This chimes with my response at the time‚ when I remember saying to a friend of mine, "Sonic Youth went soft"

that's fair, but also makes me think you should check out RR! much more concise songs.

That's next! Right now I'm listening to the newish Monolake, tho :-)

The thing with Rather Ripped is it's a Sonic Youth album for people who don't like Sonic Youth. Like, who the hell wants to hear them do boring indie rock songs that literally any other group of four middle-aged white people could extrude in their sleep? Ooh, "concise songs" — yep, that's exactly what hooked me about Sonic Youth the first time I heard Sister and Daydream Nation and Sonic Death...

Erm, okay, I got tired of the Monolake, listening to RR...this is not a promising start.

Yeah, I think after Murray Street, I'm just like, "this is boring." Even the rockingest noisiest parts of both Sonic Nurse and RR are predictable and lack the sort of dynamic tension that lights up Murray Street, or maybe it's just that Murray Street is the ur-album of this period of SY and everything that came after simply isn't very good.

At this point, Sister, EVOL, BMR, Goo, and DR are the only albums by them that I can't live without, and I could curate an album of selections from all their other records.

my take on elder sonic youth records is that sometimes ppl soften with age and thats ok and also their music got prettier which is good

Yeah, that's the difference — their classic records were beautiful, their late-period records are pretty.

that’s fine, but i also don’t go to SY for pretty, so i don’t care!

they also lost me after murray street, which is probably my 2nd or 3rd fav album of theirs, for the most part.

i skip around sonic nurse and rr, but the highlights are worth price of admission. im especially partial to "unmade bed" and "i love you golden blue" which i think are some of their best songs.

murray street is a 10 ofc

Never quite got the DN as chill idea... Granted it's less ferocious than BMR, which I absolutely love, but it does what it sets out to do extremely well. Cross the Breeze is one of Kim's best - I love how it switches between galloping hardcore and almost-metal breakdowns. And the noise sections are some of their most beautiful. When I saw them do the DN shows, Thurston introduced Silver Rocket as their homage to Jesus & Mary Chain. Maybe that was just playing to the Glasgow crowd, but it does make sense. Some beautiful noise on that, the kinda thing they'd explore at greater length on Diamond Sea, which for me is the peak in terms of combining their mellower side with immersive noise.

That totally makes sense about Silver Rocket and JAMC.

At this point, Sister, EVOL, BMR, Goo, and DR are the only albums by them that I can't live without, and I could curate an album of selections from all their other records.

― czech hunter biden's laptop (the table is the table), Wednesday, July 2, 2025 6:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Glad to hear you've come around on DiRty.

oops, obv DN lol

Tbh I can't really enjoy RR because when I listen to it (with hindsight) Thurston's lyrics seem to be about his affair with Eva (e.g. "Sleepin Around" but in my mind all of them take on that aspect).

Teaser for the Tamra Davis documentary type thing "The Best Summer" (inc SY amongst others)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZHk6rU7cWc