Sonic Youth performed
Daydream Nation this past weekend at Barcelona’s Primavera festival, playing one of the 80’s most cherished No Wave albums in sequence from start to finish, for the first time in 18 years. Actually, the band had never played the whole album, which holds the distinction of being listed on the
Library of Congress' National Recording Registry, and is part of a developing trend of sequential LP performances that recently has seen The Stooges taking the stage to do
Fun House, Slint reprising
Spiderland and Melvins playing
Houdini.
I happened to be in town, so I headed over to the Parc del Forum, right on the Mediterranean next to some of the city’s best beaches, to check out the first show before they take it on the road for 16 dates, with several performances at European music festivals before bringing it to the U.S. at the
Pichfork Festival in Chicago (July 13) then onto Berkeley, L.A. and New York.
Thurston Moore, who along with bandmate Lee Renaldo were named the
33rd and 34th best guitar players off all time by
Rolling Stone, joked “we never did this when we were in our teens and have only found the confidence now that we’re in our 30s.” Good one, considering that they are now all at least late 40s, but hardly a joke at all when they opened with “Teenage Riot,” thunderously ripping through all 14 tracks, soaring through renditions of “Candle,” “Eric’s Trip” and “Total Trash,” before ending with “Eliminator Jr.”
It’s clear that Sonic Youth mean business when the roadies roll out racks with some 50 guitars, all unconventionally tuned, many of them specially outfitted with
third bridges for that special SY chiming, clanging noise. Moore and Renaldo swapped out axes nearly every song, the droning chaos they unleashed perfectly harmonizing with Kim Gordon’s haunting voice, not to mention Moore’s hipster surf drawl, for a vintage time-warp set of dissonant brilliance.
After blazing through Daydream Nation, the band came back onstage to a wildly appreciative audience for encores from their latest disc, last summer’s excellent
Rather Ripped, closing it out with songs like “Incinerate,” “Reena” and “Pink Steam.”
Daydream Nation will be re-released June 12 in a
deluxe edition that includes live versions of each of the songs and various extras, with a four-disc vinyl edition coming out later in this month.
SY go back into the studio after the tour this fall to begin recording their 16th album.
After 25 years, it’s nice to see one of America’s finest bands reaching for a new peak.
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