‘Murray Street’ by Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is a band that holds a very unique place in the history of rock’n’roll. With a career lasting almost 30 years, Sonic Youth has always been a leading influence in underground music. They are just one of those bands that has been around forever but has always found a way to doing something new and interesting. The way I see Sonic Youth is as a gateway to more experimental music. They are like the gateway drug of avante-garde music. You listen to Sonic Youth before you hit the heavy stuff.
That isn’t to say Sonic Youth doesn’t make some heavy, crazy music themselves. The SRY series is designated for their experimental compositions. Plus, when they started is 1981 they were a big part of the no-wave scene, helping bring noise rock to more people. As time wore on they became major players in the alternative scene and played with such acts as The Jesus Lizard, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana, etc. Sonic Youth survived the 90’s and continued to make music into this millennium. For this album they added on long time collaborator Jim O’Rourke as a fifth member. For their 12th album they created a landscape of simple drumbeats and guitar noises.
This album is made up of my favorite type of Sonic Youth song, the noisy, lyrically thick, stream of consciousness jams that you have to listen to three or four times before you fully appreciate them. Compared to a lot of Sonic Youth records, ‘Murray Street’ is rather light. All the guitar noise you’d expect from Sonic Youth is there but it’s used in a different way. Instead of smack you in the face and throwing you around, it’s used for texture and mood. The most aggravated this album gets is on the track ‘Plastic Sun’ which features the classic angry vocals of bassist Kim Gordon, which is one of my favorite gritty vocals in history. This album is also another example of the rhythm section keeping it somewhat simple for the benefit of the song. I know it works for the song because I’m bobbing along to it.
My favorite part of this album and the the thing that separates it from other Sonic Youth albums for me is the lyrics. I’m heavily into beat poetry and the whole stream of consciousness type of poetry. While the lyrics of ‘Murray Street’ aren’t all like that, a good portion is. Every line is a poem in itself, wound together to create such a clear and thick image. The words on this record almost breathe with the music. It’s sometime hard to distinguish a separation. They are the kind of lyrics that it doesn’t matter what they say but instead how they make you feel.
All in all ‘Murray Street’ is a great album to start with if you want to get into Sonic Youth. It’s a point in their career that they were changing sounds so it has elements of all their work in it. It’s not too long or abrasive, which is likely to scare the uninitiated. It’s a beautiful noise punk record.
Song: ‘Radical Adults Like Godhead Style’
