Bad Mood Youth: Miss You
 

Sonic Youth have been making noise for years. But what happened to their interest in creating records with a consistent mood, where each song is like the individual bone of a skeleton, rather than just a bunch of unrelated experiments? Their latest albums are getting brighter and quieter, which is fine, but A Thousand Leaves (sans the punkier Kim Gordon songs) is possibly their only post 80's answer to Bad Moon Rising and Evol. Those three records have a Vibe to 'em: Moon's tense like the soundtrack of a horror movie; Evol is Moon in love, cool and nonchalant, a dark beauty, and their best display of their ability to craft memorable melodies (Star Power's President, Expressway is God; and I guess Evol itself is the Bible or something); and A Thousand Leaves is a spacy hypnotic trip, basically what Washing Machine might have been if most of its songs resembled the most interesting parts of "Diamond Sea".

I agree to an extent that the older albums had the feeling of being continuous pieces as opposed to individual songs. What I have always loved about 'Bad Moon Rising', 'Evol' and 'Daydream Nation' is that you forget what song your listening to as it all flows into one ugly, majestic, perverse symphony from hell. The later albums do seem to be more songform based, But I think SY has returned to making those kind of albums again (Rather Ripped being the exception). Particularly with 'NYCG&F' and 'Murray Street'. But perhaps that had a lot to do with Jim being in the band. The SYR's have that 80's SY feel in many ways.

Lee Ranaldo's been so consistent. His songs have a real quality/mood to 'em. They're so distinguishable from Kim and Thurston's. They seem to be about something important, real. He's clearly still stuck in the 80's, thank goodness.

The one positive surprise on Rather Ripped for me is Kim Gordon's impression of Nico. Finally like Lee she's just singing the song (or half-singing/half-talking), instead of punkin' it up to mixed results. Her songs are the highlight, beautiful, mellow, cool and seductive. She gives her smoothest vocal performance since - yep, you guessed it - the 80s.

just wait. they will begin doing encores of Gloria and Louie Louie before you know it.

I think that their albums still set a consistent mood.