It's been 53 years since the band broke up, so can I finally say
 

that Rather Ripped is one of their best albums without getting my head ripped off?;)

It is a good album. But I still rank it below EJSTNS, which is a great album. Now that is controversial and'll get yah a good head rippin'.



In my opinion, all of SY's albums are good albums.

No, you can't say that without getting your head ripped, sorry. If you're lucky though your neck may not get shat down.

Rather Ripped is one of Sonic Youth's best albums fuck you very MUCH. Unfortunate that so many people dismiss it due to shallow standards of distortion and "weirdness", but it's their loss.

I really like Rather Ripped. Sonic Youth was 30 years into their career and just went "let's make an indie rock album". It's what got one of my closest friends into Sonic Youth, And fuck Reena goes so fucking hard

'The firefighters hose me down
I don't care, I'll burn out anyhow

The firefighters are so nice
I remember you so cold as ice'


People who enjoy this album should be deported to Gaza.

:fuckyou::fuckyou:

It's a fine album in my book. Not my favorite of theirs, but very solid. I have fond memories listening to it in the year it came out as teenager. Nice jams, juicy melodies. Its strength is certainly more in individual songs than a cohesive whole imo, but it's a very chill and smooth listen. "Rats" is one of Lee's most underrated songs, I think.

That's odd; to me it's very cohesive and powerful as an album, perfectly sequenced. I don't find it a record to chill to, either - plenty of rockers!


You were a teenager when it came out?! Fuuuck me...

Oh, it flows alright. And certainly has rockers in there. I was thinking of tunes like "Turquoise Boy", "Jams Run Free" and "Reena" - the Kim songs were pretty smooth on that record. But some of Thurston's tunes flow in that way too - especially "Do You Believe In Rapture?" and "Lights Out". In general, I think the sounds lean towards a "warmer" timbre. I think it has a smooth quality to it that is somewhat hard to put my finger on. Like, perfect to put on whilst sitting on a porch or a balcony somewhere gazing into a blue afternoon sky, having a nice beverage or something. Not discounting the more dissonant and experimental tunes of course - "Pink Steam" is a proper trip and a banger at that. I just feel it has a very "breezy" atmosphere overall, and I mean that in the best way possible. That's what I'm getting out of Rather Ripped. And I think it pulls that off pretty damn well. Just my impression though.


PS: "Helen Lundeberg" on the European special edition is a gem too.






Yeah, time is one scary motherfucker. It hits all of us.

Nah sister kinda sucks.

Catholic block
HOTWIRE MY HEART
the bonus track

yeah schizophrenia and beauty lies and all those other songs rock but htose songs ruin the whole thing.


Actually to give some more hot takes here's all the bad albums:

Sister
Dirty(their worst by a large margin. genetic is one of their best tho)
Thousand Leaves
NYC ghosts and flowers(i don't even remember this album cuz it's so bad)
Probably the Whitey Album too cuz i never got around to listening to that.

Also S/T is in their top 5 best albums

And to each, their own. And that is certainly me as I am in the minority as it is a near tie between Confusion and Sister for my favorite album, with Daydream not far behind. Sister is near perfection, in so many ways. I enjoy the noisy, experimental and chaotic nature of the early albums. That said, the S/T is fairly tight and almost has post-disco vibes. I appreciated the approach of NYC Ghosts. Dirty is far and above Ripped.


And The Whitey Album is fun, but I've never considered it a true S-Y album. It is basically them goofing off and having some fun. Although, Burnin' Up is pretty darn cool, as well as some of the instrumentals/atmospherics.


It also matters greatly where we are in our lives when this stuff hits us.




--

lmfao

NO

i couldn't care less if you like whatever you like, but you don't get to badmouth sister and live to tell the tale xD

Yeah it's weird to say Sister is one of their worst I would say for the majortity of SY fans it's in the top 2 of their albums.

Maybe music is just not for you.

are you drunk?

I think that's it. I used to love Sister. I think it's probably their most eclectic album, and the highs are very high. But to me the lows are very low. I've mostly stopped listening to Sonic Youth, outside of the occasional Washing Machine listen(and some other songs off random albums), but I come back to the good parts of Sister every now and then

And we wonder why so few people post here... :D:D:D

I often come back to S-Y. And just recently I started from the beginning again, and working my way through everything, and am up to A Thousand Leaves, whilst putting away the laundry.


There is a lot of S-Y that still gives me chills when I hear it. I have not felt that in a long while with new music I hear. The National floored me the other day on Colbert, however. Hopefully that was not a fluke; I shall investigate further.



I've just not been exploring music like I used to. Heck, when I was a teen in the 80's and 90's I was saving my school lunch money to buy music and ate ketchup, taco and mayo packets and people's "I don't want this."

Dude, whaddaya mean "teen" and "school" - that is my life NOW.

Even Sonic Youth themselves know that Sister is a way better album than Rather Ripped.

I really like rather ripped! I always recommend it to people who are first getting into the band, because it's more mellow and chilled out than the rest. Even though I do LOVE crazy noises and harmonics, I think Rather Ripped can be a nice, calmer record to go back to. I also just think it proves that Sonic Youth doesn't JUST make guitar noises and weird songs.

So Rather Ripped = the training wheels record. Makes sense that it came out around the same time they started making records for Starbucks.

that's the problem for some of us who learned to love this band by listening to evol or bad moon rising or confusion is sex (althought the first time i heard them was on the radio, i was new here, and kim singing drunken butterfly got me like a bullet through the chest. but then i got evol as a cd. evol! it was from another planet. but i digress)

my problem with it i guess is that yes, they can play this or that but this was never what i listened for with this band. not that they don't have a right to do whatever they wanted. they do. but i was rather disappointed with the result

to me it feels like the reverse of the year punk broke. that movie title meant the year punk broke into the mainstream (1991). but rather ripped to me sounds and feels like the year the mainstream broke into sonic youth

you could maybe say the same about the velvet undergrounds loaded i guess ("loaded with hits"). but i fucking love loaded. except that annoying lonesome cowboy bill shit. ugh! more earworm than anything. but i love that album anyway. but rather ripped i'm sorry i i don't. of course anybody else who wants to definitely can and should. im not the musical police

but yeah haha, i was (horribly) disappointed by it

#2 (different)

you know im going to have to take it back and disagree with the premise of your comment rather (lol) than reply to it in its own terms as i did before. but don't completely erase that please, this is just a different response, see if it makes sense to your ears

the reason i disagree with the premise is because there is plenty of "nice" and "calm" in other sonic youth and syg records

but if i have to put my finger on it, this is different because rather ripped sounds to me like a record that is "about" thurston singing, you know what i mean "about" singing? like the music is not a thing in itself but a platform for him singing. and that's the departure

the noise of yore helped make tracks be about the total sound, not the singing or the "tune", but even without noise sonic youth always felt like the totality of the music was an end in itself. the vocals were there (or not), sometimes you could locate a tune and sometime not, but they were not central. melodies would melt into improvisation and return later. when vocals shone they were side by side with other stuff going in at the same time (eg see drunken butterfly which i mentioned earlier). everybody got their chance to shine. sonic youth was always the greatest as an ensemble where the parts have a glorious interplay, like a jazz band. i mean, for example, lee was never "second" to thurston, their guitars went head to head. and their live shows were for that reason... transcendental, really, no exaggeration. a beautiful chaos

whereas this record is more about um... thurston front and center, singing. which is like most "normal" pop records do, they are about the singer singing and the musicians are "the band". this is like his solo records i suppose. and it's not a total work of all the parts, to my ears anyway

this is why loaded works, btw, to connect back to that parallel from the earlier post, because you could put lou reed at the center of almost any band and be great (except not with rick wakeman and steve howe lol, great as they were in yes the chemistry with lou was not there, it's almost comedic that someone would put them together)

and yes vu without john cale and other deserting/circulating members is not vu proper original, but lou reed is lou reed and he could sing well but more than that had an amazing delivery, and was the poet of new york, and i looooove lou reed solo albums regardless of/ as standalones

for my ears, thurstons greatest talent is no doubt the guitar rather (lol) than voice or lyrics. his best singing is done with the hands. in that department, few people can match him. well, lee can. the two guitars together... i have no words

-

eta: oh look at t's new pal... https://www.instagram.com/reel/C46p3zuti1E/

there are videos of that and a previous show on the interwebs...

I completely understand what yr saying and where yr coming from, and I agree there are other "nice" SY tracks on other records! But yeah, now that you pointed it out I do notices it's very much about Thurston singing. I don't really like Thurston's vocals on RR, I do really like Kim's tho.

Time, life changes, parenthood, success, living in different locations (NYC vs western Mass), expanding tastes, etc… all affect output & vibe. Of course they would change by this time.