|
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".
|