I can see the multiple peaks thing, if you're active for 28ish years and still try to make new stuff each time you end up with a discography more like a mountain range than a straight up and down peak & trough.

Nurse, RR and Eternal are definitely where they were *just* sounding like SY though. Nurse was "remember them groovy extended jams from DN? then you'll love this!". It was safe, but lovely and textured and the jams were sweet and pure if not fresh. RR I love deeply and will fight you on the playing field after school to defend its honour, but is undoubtedly safer again. I just love the songs, it's the shiny pop record that Jet Set was claimed to be but wasn't. The Eternal was a sad end, all the joy and love was gone, makes sense in the wider context of Kim/Thurston and all that but it really was dire and is the only actually *bad* main sequence LP for me.

Even though the song-based proper Albums You Might Actually Find In A Shop played it safe, the SYRs/extra-curricular stuff was still pushing, 8 with Merzbow and then 9 for that French movie soundtrack were an interesting if not entirely successful new direction and utterly excellent respectively.

Did they ever claim Experimental Jet Set was meant to be a pop record? This is news to me, unless I've missed something. I thought it was meant to be a less commercial-sounding record after the release of Dirty in the Grunge golden days. In any case, I wouldn't really compare the two records. One is great and the other is almost completely rubbish, for a start.

Dirty is rubbish? I wouldn't say so. Or you meant Experimental Jet Set?

I didn't have coffee today, my brain is slow.

No, I was referring to the comparison between RR and EJSTNS. I love Dirty.

I have a memory of reading an interview with SY around the time of ExpJetSet and they said something to the effect that Dirty was a more conventional heavy rock record that lead to them playing on the same bills as bands they weren't into so they wanted to make something more odd and ramshackle, more or less inspired by groups like pavement and the folk implosion.

However that was 25 years ago and my memory could be totally wrong.

ExpJetSet was the 2nd SY record I got and i loved it then and still love it now, I used to sit sit in my bedroom listening to it and pouring over the myth-science-art cards trying to expunge any deeper meanings from them. I was baffled when i later found out that a lot of self-proclaimed SY fans really dislike ExpJetSet. I guess the world is full of meat heads, idiots and Red Hot Chilli Peppers fans though.

Not sure if they did, or if it was attributed to them, or if I'm just mis-remembering the Pavement/Folk Implosion thing T&B references, or it was some sardonic offhand Thurston-ism that I've taken as gospel for some reason, but it's not a theory I've consciously made up...

hehehe, me too.

Gotta say Sonic Nurse is my fav album by far, as the sound quality - especially the bass - is really really good.
Actually thought I lost my copy, but it's since been found.
It's Rather Ripped that I can't find among my SY collection.....