Time takes its crazy Poll... Sonic Youth: Washing Machine

this was my SY gateway album and thus will probably always be my favorite. this is impossible

Partly inspired by the Memphis albums thread but mostly because I'm feeling it heavy this week.

"The Diamond Sea", no contest

i infuriated my spouse a few years back when we were in England on a brief daytrip with the express purpose of getting the recent vinyl reissue. was my bridge album between the early 90s-era to my preferred late90s-Sonic Nurse era.

It was my favourite album by anyone from about 95-97. It doesn't always hold up as well as a whole for me now but "The Diamond Sea" still flows so well and live footage from this time cooks.

I know it's silly, but "The Diamond Sea" (while obviously an incredible song / showcase for feedback) makes me sad now given Thurston/Kim's fate

Yes, Diamond Sea is a heart breaker in hindsight. So is Junkie's Promise (clunker it is). Can't say for sure because they were such an oblique band lyrically but this album may have their most direct autobio writing. Washing Machine is my pick though I hope someone makes a compelling case for, like, Panty Lies or No Queen Blues.

Huh, I never thought of "The Diamond Sea" as being about Thurston's and Kim's relationship, or anything really obvious and concrete, but, now that you guys say it, I see how "tell her that you love her eternally" could seem sadly ironic in retrospect.

i thought it was well known that that was what it was about

I don't think it's obvious at all! The lines that refer to a relationship don't seem unambiguously positive to me either.

i don't know if it's obvious or not! just that 'everybody says' that's what it's about

yeah that seemed to be the common wisdom at the time

Interesting. I can't find anything about Moore saying that, either online or in Browne's book. I probably did read a journo saying it at some point, checked the words, and went 'eh'. It always seemed eerie and bittersweet to me, culminating in furious noise explosions, so it's hard for me to see it as a happy love song. I think I might have worked out some interpretation involving the self and the passage of time when I was 17.

Ha, Simon, my iTunes went straight to Blue Rodeo's "Diamond Mine" after this. Two psychedelic classics.

'The Diamond Sea', duh.

Just learned that the autographs on the kids' shirts on the cover are Thalia and Chris from Come! Is there a thread for bands signing other bands' merch?

Very far from my favorite SY album and maybe their worst of a good decade, still a B+ or B. Voted for "Skip Tracer."

toss-up between title track and "the diamond sea" ... i listened to "the diamond sea" a LOT in high school.

Saucer-Like. Achingly sad chorus. Lee's best. WM rules though, so many to choose from.

Very far from my favorite SY album and maybe their worst of a good decade, still a B+ or B. Voted for "Skip Tracer."

― Your sweetie-pie-coo-coo I love ya (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, January 22, 2019 8:08 PM (fifty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think I agree, which goes to show how fantastic their 90s output was. Voted 'The Diamond Sea'.

Coco was an infant (7/1/94) around the time that WM was being written and I always thought Diamond Sea was like a vague cautionary Alice In Wonderland tale for her.

Not related to this album, but reading this article makes it sound that Coco didn't talk to her dad for 6+ years, which is pretty sad:
https://nylon.com/articles/nylon-coco-gordon-moore-march-2017

(Voted "Little Trouble Girl")

I believe "Little Trouble Girl" was originally recorded for the Grace of My Heart soundtrack. It shows up in the movie somewhere but didn't make it onto the (exceptionally great) soundtrack album.

title track vs skip tracer vs diamond sea for me. will have to think about it

i went from being a massive sonic youth fan in the 80s to barely listening to them in the 90s and then getting some of those 2000s album, possibly for nostalgic reasons. i've never heard washing machine (or dirty or a thousand leaves for that matter). maybe i might listen to it today

of those three i'd start with dirty, it was my first complete album by them and is still my fave. i think it's more punk and less prog, that's why i love it.

Surprised at the (general) lack of love for 'Becuz'. Top 5 Kim song for me!

I voted for title track. This was the great white whale in my teenage record collection; I think I finally heard it for the first time a couple years ago

Voting Washing Machine because the bit where it turns into CCR still thrills me

Haha yeah, it starts chooglin' like 70s Crazy Horse... plus Kim's vox in that part are great.

NickB I am legit shocked by that, may you enjoy those great great records as much as I do

Surprised at the (general) lack of love for 'Becuz'. Top 5 Kim song for me!

It's my #2.

omg i love "becuz"

hard not to vote for diamond sea, but washing machine might actually be my fav.

this was my first sy album.

and "the diamond sea" was my introduction to long-form psychedelic guitar music, so it feels like the right choice

Stuck between "Unwind" and "Saucer-Like."

I almost voted for "Unwind", it's so gorgeous

Saucer-Like > Washing Machine > Unwind > Little Trouble Girl is their prettiest 4 song run ever.

Saucer-Like is an easy pick for me. Lee is great and this is one of his best tracks.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

skip tracer. the guitar sound / riffs on this track are gorgeous

Polled...yet totally screwed up

the guitar guy played real cool feedback and super sounding riffs

honey, here's a quarter

^giving this another spin rn. Still sounds f'in awesome

the guitar guy played real cool feedback and super sounding riffs

this part is about Mecca Normal btw

"If you want me to..."

Voted for title track, which just oozes warmth and so many crazy hooks, but Skip Tracer is also one of my favorite of theirs. A bit uneven (could skip Panty Lines ans Little Trouble Girl) but this is usually the SY album I recommend to people.

hello 2016

Passages of No Queen Blues make you think of YYYs' "No no no".
This album is better than the Goo-Dirty period, but it still lacks something, especially in that middle section: it's alright but not gripping.
Kinda hard to vote for anything else than The Diamond Sea.

the guitar guy played real cool feedback and super sounding riffs

this part is about Mecca Normal btw

Ha! Mecca Normal was my first live music experience when I saw them open for Sonic Youth in '93.

xxp

the guitar guy played real cool feedback and super sounding riffs

this part is about Mecca Normal btw

Ha! Mecca Normal was my first live music experience when I saw them open for Sonic Youth in '93.

it's one of those albums where the title totally turned me off. i think i maybe listened twice to it and got terribly bored. the diamond sea was lauded everywhere, it is by far the best thing on the album but i must say that i much prefer my sonic youth short and fast and not long and slow.

love this album so much. voted for "washing machine" narrowly ahead of "becuz", "unwind", "skip tracer" and "the diamond sea", but really i love everything here.

I like the top-rated comment on the youtube for the diamond sea:

yoyoyoyoyoyoyooyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyooyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyooyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyoyo

i much prefer my sonic youth short and fast and not long and slow

I am exactly the opposite!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Panty Lies deserved a vote for being the most dissonant / atonal "song" SY ever recorded (according to the WM wiki). Love it

I'm good with these results

Damn a lot of people participated!

Sonic Youth is as close to a consensus band for ILX as it gets really.

Panty Lies deserved a vote for being the most dissonant / atonal "song" SY ever recorded (according to the WM wiki). Love it

― flappy bird

Panty Lies has distinct tonality

Are you hearing F# as the tonal centre?

I don't know, i'd have to sit with a keyboard with it. I usually play by ear, never *really* learned how to read music, save for the basics. I can't recognize arbitrary (out of the air) frequencies or pitches--like "that's a C#" without first having a reference point. I was thinking about it (the main, clean guitar figure) last night, without listening to it.. it definitely seems tonal? There's a high register, sort of skree-ing guitar part that appears later on in the track--not sure if it agrees (wholly; harmonically / consonantly) with the main riff (it seems to?) ... it does seem tonal. The primary riff of the song seems to establish a definite tone (or tonality) for the duration of the track, though I don't really know music theory.

Checking with my guitar and double-checking with Chris Lawrence's tabs: The bass does seem to ground it on F# (by mostly staying on that note!), as well as the way the vocal line comes back to F# on the repeated "air-air-air-air-air-air-air-air" refrains. It largely seems to be built around semitones and tritones, though. The main guitar riff alternates between D#-E, then between E-F, before hammering on a dissonant chord under the refrain that seems to be made of F, a bunch of F#s, and a B (016). Lee plays an A (a tritone from D#) under the D#-E bit and an F# under the E-F bit, I think. The vocal melody goes something like D#-G-F(-G-F) before landing on the F#. Then in the second verse, Thurston's starts a whole tone lower and the bass drops to D. The vocal line here seems to mostly ascend from C# to F#, though we might get G#s later.

Tbh, Kim's vocal and lyrics on this song often annoy me but breaking it down a bit helped bring home just how dissonant it gets and reminded me of how deliciously uneasy it could feel.

Sund4r, as a music theory know-nothing and a deep lover of this album and band, it is a joy to read your formal breakdown. I hope there's more of this kind of discussion.

Aw, thanks, I'm glad. Maybe I'll have time to tackle "No Queen Blues" tomorrow if we get another snow day.

In the meantime, here's a rocking live version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiVP8xfLfWg

that's a great song, i had totally forgotten about it.

Sund4r, did you manage to catch which "note" the high-pitched feedback is? - it appears at some point, mid-way through the song, and it's not atonal

also does atonality = the inharmonicity of the closely-related frequencies / notes ? or is it an arbitrary-ness (western tonality-wise) of the general "chord" structures?

The broad meaning of atonality = the absence of a tonal centre, i.e. the piece of music is not in any key. Most music has a tonal centre (or tonic): one pitch that can be seen as most 'important' and functions as a sort of gravitational centre, usually giving the listener some kind of sense of stability when it is returned to. (So when "I Want You Back" is in the key of Ab major, part of what this means is that the note Ab - the first and last note of the famous bass riff - is the tonal centre, for example.) Other pitches have different hierarchical roles in relation to this central pitch - the note that is a fifth above the tonic is usually of major importance (and the second-last note of that riff is Eb, a fifth above Ab, as is the first note of the vocal melody). Melodies and chord progressions are usually built around this system (which is what I think you're getting at with your second option). Even music that is not built around chord progressions can have a tonal centre, though, e.g. in Indian classical music. Atonal music, e.g. Schoenberg from 1909 on, does away with this hierarchical system of pitch organization and does not place any one pitch as a centre. The organizational principles that replace it can be highly varied.

I do think F# mostly functions as a centre in "Panty Lies", through the brute force of the bassline and the refrain, but it does seem interesting how dissonant and chromatic it is - any feeling of resolution at that refrain is undermined by the dissonance of Thurston's chord there; it is hard to identify any harmonic progression. (Obv, these are ideas that this band has played with elsewhere as well.)

Linking this discussion on the music theory thread

Doesn't sound atonal to me, it just sounds like he's imitating the lead guitar on "Friction", mangling a melodic minor scale and rendering its changeable pitches non-functional

Television's "Friction"?

Wait, do you mean "No Queen Blues"? That's comparatively straightforward, I think. "Panty Lies" was the one we were breaking down.

forgot to mention the bit on wikipedia about Panty Lies is a) no longer there, and b) didn't say it was atonal but "their most dissonant song"

Panty Lies would be one of the least dissonant songs on Confusion Is Next/Kill Yr Idols.

Yes I listened to No Queen Blues. I’ll give a listen to the other one tomorrow

“Panty Lies” seems no more dissonant than the average track on, say, Psychic Hearts

(this is my least favorite Kim G. vocal style, I think... can’t take it for the length of the song)

ha I like her grunting mode

Idk if "most dissonant song" is a meaningful concept, and it seems that no one is calling it atonal anymore, but I do feel like "Panty Lies" pushes tonality a lot more than something like "Ono Soul", which seems pretty solidly D Phrygian with a lot of fifths in the harmony. (I probably like the latter song a lot more btw.)

I actually think Kim did some pretty challenging things this way in this period, even more on the next album and some of the SYRs.

Yeah there are a lot of great Kim-sung noisy moments on A Thousand Leaves

French Tickler is a killer

https://obits.masslive.com/obituaries/masslive/obituary.aspx?n=daniel-j-barrett&pid=192634435&fhid=25292

Daniel J. Barrett, 38, died Tuesday, April 16, 2019 at home. He was born in Springfield on November 19, 1980. Dan loved and enjoyed being with his family. Dan had a deep and profound love for his only child, Ashley, he passed on his love of reading to her. Through the years they shared some special times together. He was a loving and caring son to his mother and had a dedicated bond with his brother, Timothy. He loved to cook and was employed at numerous restaurants around Western Massachusetts. Dan moved to the Boston area where he continued his passion for cooking as a chef as well as teaching under privileged youth. Dan's last employment was as an instructor at a Christian School in Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts. Dan also enjoyed reading, playing video games, and telling jokes. Dan loved making other people laugh including impromptu stand up at local clubs. Dan had a great love of writing, he was a prolific and talented writer who received awards for some of his short stories. He loved to play music, especially guitar and bass, he even performed in several local bands. Dan’s personal claim to fame was being featured on Sonic Youth’s album cover Washing Machine. He was an avid sports fan and especially liked the Patriots and Red Sox. He leaves a daughter Ashley Geary of Little Elm, TX, his mother Kim (Leary) Vuelta of Westfield, His brother Timothy Barrett and spouse Janea Barrett of Westfield, his sister Christine (Barrett) Bieda and spouse Nathan Bieda of Chicopee, stepfather Mike Vuelta of Westfield, step brothers Jason Vuelta and companion Samantha Dick of West Southbrook, MA, Corey Vuelta and spouse Natasha Vuelta of Phoenix, AZ, Matt Barth and spouse Laura Barth of Holland, MA, maternal grandmother Joyce(Renaud) Leary of Westfield and his girlfriend Sarah Parker of West Roxbury, MA. Dan was predeceased by his father David Barret and his grandparents James and Eleanor (Sheehan) Barrett and Thomas Joseph Leary. Dan also leaves behind a large family including aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, and friends in both Western Massachusetts and Boston. The funeral will be held on Wednesday, April 24th at 7 pm from the Firtion-Adams Funeral Service, 76 Broad Street, Westfield, MA. Burial will be private. Calling hours will be held at the funeral home on Wednesday from 4-7 pm before the service. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to a memorial fund for Dan’s daughter Ashely Geary. Donations may be mailed to 1109 Lake Hollow Drive, Little Elm, TX 75068. Firtionadams.com

Published in The Republican on Apr. 23, 2019

That is sad, Al. Please don’t tell me when the Nirvana Baby or Siamese Dream Twins die; I’d rather live in ignorance...

I'm bummed out by this still

He's the guy on the right, yeah? In high school I had a friend who got me into Sonic Youth, and I always kind of saw the two of us in the Washing Machine cover, with me as Dan.