From The Vaults

Sonic Youth
Sister
(DGC, 1987)

Their next album, Daydream Nation, would be their most critically acclaimed (Pitchfork picked it as the greatest album of the 80s), but I would rather listen to Sister anyday. To my ears, it is the best combination of their earlier noise experimentation and the more straightforward song-oriented work that would define their later career. The album opens with "Scizophrenia," which was their most mellow and melodic song to date. It is easily one of the best songs on the album in its own right, and putting it up front is a brilliant way to lull the listener into a relaxed state before thrusting them into the noise and aggression that surges through the rest of the album. But even when the rest of the songs are at their most aggressive, there is a subtle sub-surface creepiness to them that ties the whole thing together. The album is tangled, noisy, hostile...and absolutely addicting after a few spins. They create a soundworld that is utterly compelling, even at its most disturbing. Bassist/Vocalist Kim Gordon is at her spacey, abstract strangest during the gorgeously ugly "Beauty Lies in the Eye" and at her most sexually violent and unsettling during "Pacific Coast Highway." Every song she would write afterwards would be some variation on these two. Guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo also offer up some of their best songs, and their most varied. "Cotton Crown" is a rare Thurston/Kim duet that serves as the swirling, slow-motion eye of the storm. The fried, off-kilter garage rock cover of "Hot Wire My Heart" is a sound they would never quite revisit, and the hardest-rocking track they ever recorded. They even show a sense of humor on "Master Dik," as Thurston spouts out ridiculous macho lyrics, all swagger and saracasm. But they attack this non-standard material with the same verve and tenacity as the more "serious" songs, tying the whole thing - humor, violence, sexuality, beauty, indifference, noise - into one thick knot. They would push their sound even further on Daydream Nation, but Sonic Youth the idea was at its most compelling right here - a glorious tangled mess of all of their possibilities and contradictions.

MP3: Schizophrenia

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