http://www.chartattack.com/damn/2006/09/0111.cfm
Friday September 01, 2006 @ 06:00 PM
If you're wondering why
Sonic Youth seem to put out a record and tour every second summer, the answer is simpler than you might think. At this point, the band's entire creative process revolves around one thing: school schedules.
"Most of the band are parents," drummer
Steve Shelley says. "If you want your record out by June, you have to finish it in February. We tend to work on records in the fall and winter to get them out in June, so we can go play some shows when the record is out."
SY released give or take their 15th studio LP, Rather Ripped, this past June. On it, the group display a much more polished sound than longtime fans have come to expect. All the tracks are fairly concise, and not a single one features the noise jams that SY have become legendary for.
That said, the sound is befitting of the indie icons. At 53,
Kim Gordon is more restrained and tuneful than ever, while
Thurston Moore and
Lee Ranaldo experiment with more melodic song structures to complement each track's focus.
"It was written pretty quickly and arranged pretty quickly," Shelley says. "Last August, we went up to Massachusetts and spent some time in Kim and Thurston's basement.
"A lot of them were already partially formed. They were chord progressions that Thurston had already stockpiled. So, a lot of them were Thurston, like, 'Here's something I've got,' and we would just all play along and see what we could come up with. So not as many of these came out of the abstract jam sessions we would have in New York City at our studio."
That Rather Ripped ended up a critical success is a testament to Sonic Youth's renewed artistic development following a slow period in the late '90s. What's even more impressive is that they had to revert back to a four-piece after two incredibly successful collaborations with
Jim O'Rourke — Murray Street and Sonic Nurse — who left to pursue a film career.
Not that the transition presented any significant obstacle for the band, who've now been together for more than a quarter of a century.
"It was pretty easy," Shelley says. "We'd been that four-piece for a long time. It felt different, but it didn't feel odd or strange. We'd done our time as a four-piece."
To fill out the live lineup for this summer's shows, SY hired former
Pavement multi-instrumentalist
Mark Ibold. Just don't tell the band that they now qualify as a supergroup.
"I thought we were pretty super before that with Jim O'Rourke in the group," Shelley says with a laugh. "You just have to be good to play with our band.
"Someone mentioned Mark, and everyone thought that would be a good thing. He's a really sweet guy."
There was one significant happening in the Sonic Youth universe while the band hibernated to make the new LP. The U.S. government's Library Of Congress added the group's landmark recording, Daydream Nation, to its archive of prominent recorded works.
But just as Shelley says the band members are fairly oblivious to their own status as legends of their scene, it wasn't an Earth-shattering event in their eyes. They didn't even show up for the ceremony. "I think we were working on the new record," Shelley recalls.
"It's one of those things you hear about and it doesn't really affect your day-to-day life or your state of reality. It's something that people tell you about. When you see it on paper, it's nice.
"I think I was just telling someone, we were the only record from the '80s that was inducted this time around. That felt kind of cool."
Sonic Youth will make their final Canadian stop of the year at the Osheaga Festival in Montreal on Saturday. The event takes place at Parc Jean Drapeau and the first day also features
Dinosaur Jr.,
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!,
K-OS,
Islands and
The Stills. The second day is headlined by
Ben Harper,
The Flaming Lips and
Wolf Parade.
—Noah Love