The best 44 4th Albums of All Time – #37

Sister – Sonic Youth (1987, SST Records)

“I’m a mating rhythm”

Points 45

Highest Rank  1st

Hot Wire My Heart – Sonic Youth (1987, SST Records)

“Best 4^th album ever?  ‘Sister’ by Sonic Youth.  Done.  Next question.” 

That is MJM 19 doing the fanboy worshipping at the door of the good ship Sonic Youth.  Their votes accounted for nearly half of Sonic Youth’s points and gives ‘Sister’ the perhaps slightly unwanted award of being the lowest placed album on the list to be ranked at the top of a set of votes.

For the record it didn’t feature in any other Top Tens, picking up the rest of its points by being jury members 12^th or 13^th favourite the album, which kind of begs the question, what is MJM19 seeing that everybody else isn’t? 

Well, the answer is simple MJM 19 is Thurston Moore.

He’s not really, he’s just a Sonic Youth super fan that was presented with an open goal.  He is wrong though – ‘Sister’ isn’t the greatest 4^th album ever, but it is a work of dark polluted brilliance and in my humble opinion second only to ‘Daydream Nation’ in the rundown of Sonic Youth’s greatest albums and it should definitely be higher than 37^th in this countdown.

‘Sister’ begins excellently, with ‘Schizophrenia’ which starts a thump of some drums, and a moody and melancholic guitar that shimmers a bit like ‘Seventeen Seconds’ era The Cure and some mournful lyrics from Thurston Moore and a wonderfully muted whispery cameo from Kim Gordon which leads into splashes of cymbals and squalling guitars.

Schizophrenia – Sonic Youth (1987, SST Records)

‘Sister’ is quite a fractious and frantic sort of record, all crashing cymbals, galloping guitars and furious basslines.  It’s partly why its such a good record, that and the fact that it’s a kind of raw(ish) post punk racket that you just don’t hear done as well as this anywhere these days.  The most frantic moment is ‘Stereo Sanctity’, where the guitars literally scream at you and the drums boom like a menacing thunderstorm is approaching. 

Stereo Sanctity  – Sonic Youth (1987, SST Records)

It is a rather angry and unsettled album.  ‘Sister; is the sort album that a kid who has probably just been dumped listens to whilst their parents argues in the room below them about money.  It’s an album about running away (in the bands case – probably from mental illness or something similar – but it could be from anything at all really).  Essentially, it’s an album about being anywhere apart from where you actually are.

Take the track ‘Pacific Coast Highway’ in which Kim Gordon (rather lustily, I think) urges someone to “get in the car and go somewhere” after promising to “not hurt them” as evil sounding guitars suggest mayhem or something far more carnal instead.

Pacific Coast Highway – Sonic Youth (1987, SST Records)

‘Sister’ is the sound of a band moving away from their early punky blasts and slowly treading water in the art rock sound that Sonic Youth would ultimately become synonymous with.  It fuses melody, rage, danger and frustration with a sense of chaotic perfection.

Here is tomorrows lyrical clue

“The cash machine is blue and green”

A month all about music’s greatest females- #14 Kim Gordon

Superboy take a little chance here

Kool Thing – Sonic Youth (1990, Geffen Records, Taken from ‘Goo’)

There was one other person who offered up their views on their favourite females in rock.  That was of course Swiss Adam from the bloody marvellous Bagging Area blog.  Swiss Adam found it impossible to write about one female (as pretty much everyone else has as well) and wrote a series of paragraphs about several different females, including Kim Gordon – so I’m going to hand over the keys to him for a few minutes as he explains what makes Kim Gordon so wonderful….

“Kim Gordon- her autobiography Girl In A Band is a better explanation of why Kim Gordon rocks than I can manage. Ciccone Youth’s Addicted To Love and Sonic Youth’s Bull In the Heather both rock”. 

Addicted to Love – Ciccone Youth (1989, Geffen Records, Taken from ‘The Whitey Album’)

Bull in the Heather – Sonic Youth (1994, Columbia House Records, Taken from ‘Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star’)

He is as ever, absolutely spot on – the book is an astonishing read and the tracks recommended are both excellent.  There will be more from Adam on Monday. 

As for me, I first saw Sonic Youth when they toured the ‘Dirty’ album in the early nineties, I went with my mate Jon’s brother, Richard and his girlfriend Miriam, who I barely knew. Richard phoned me on the evening of the gig, said that he had a spare ticket as his mate had bailed at the last minute, knew I liked the band and did I want it.  It was free and he was driving to London if I wanted a lift.  I was supposed to be helping my dad with the shopping that night, but a free ticket to see Sonic Youth versus a trip to Tesco’s was only going to have one winner.

That gig was incredible, and the main thing that was incredible was just how amazing Kim Gordon was that evening.  It was clear that despite the influence that Thurston Moore had over the band, it was Kim that drove the band forward, it was Kim who made them more interesting and more exciting than most of the other bands that were around at the time.  It was also clear to me at the very least that it was the songs where Kim took centre stage that really made Sonic Youth amazing. 

Here are three of those songs, in reverse order of brilliance….

Swimsuit Issue – Sonic Youth (1992, DGC Records, Taken from ‘Dirty’)

‘Swimsuit Issue’ is the one track that I think really underlines Kim Gordon’s status as one of rock original riot grrls.  It is an incendiary three minutes or so of music in which Kim transfers a load of pent up anger around an incident of alleged sexual harassment surrounding an unnamed record company executive (who just happened to work at Geffen) and his secretary.  The result was a relentless onslaught of guitars that called out the label and rallies against men who think women should be silent (see also ‘Drunken Butterfly’ from the same album).

Little Trouble Girl – Sonic Youth (1995, DGC Records, Taken from ‘Washing Machine’)

You get two great Kim’s for the price of one in ‘Little Trouble Girl’ as Kim Deal provides us with some guest vocals (and she appears to have been listening to 60s girl groups before delivering her frankly amazing vocals which are full of “Sha La La’s”).  As wonderful as that is, (I mean its Kim Deal, what’s not to love), it is the spiky spoken (ish) word from Gordon that ups the ante and trebles the atmosphere as she talks about how close she was to her mother, but it’s a closeness that is all sinister and mysterious.

Cross the Breeze – Sonic Youth (1988, Blast First Records, Taken from ‘Daydream Nation’)

To be honest any moment on ‘Daydream Nation’ is pretty much essential listening but ‘Cross the Breeze’ is for me Kim Gordon’s finest hour (although ‘Kool Thing runs it close).  It starts as your average punk rock song all energetic guitars that pummel your ears for about two minutes, when you expect it to simply end, but instead of that happening, what we get is Kim’s vocals entering the arena.  When she does that though – she sounds so cool aping a well known Clash lyric as chaos unfolds around her.

Here is Mondays lyrical teaser which is taken from just one of 912* women in rock that Swiss Adam decided to write about….

“We live on a mountain, right at the top”

*Actually ten

A Month all about Names – #8 –Joni

Hey Joni – Sonic Youth (1988, Enigma Records, Taken from ‘Daydream Nation’)

My school music teacher when I was around twelve years old was an aggressive woman named Miss Allington* she was used to try and teach us ‘Greensleeves’ on the recorder and moan at us if we couldn’t read sheet music.  Our entire class used to dread Monday afternoons because unless we could come up with a three part symphony in #E Minor in half a hour we would find ourselves in detention, which usually involved cleaning the instruments in the store room until our hands bled.

Halfway through year eight Miss Allington left our school, the rumour that went round the school was that she had joined a nunnery, but in reality she went to teach harpsichord at St Bastards, the young offenders institute in Chatham.  Our new music teacher was a revelation, a lovely lady called Mrs Gallagher **.

The first thing that Mrs Gallagher did was to actually play us some music in the class.  However, this wasn’t classical music or tracks lifted from Now That’s What I Call The Renaissance but it was proper songs with lyrics, songs with meanings.  We were then asked to write our own lyrics and set them to music. We made raps, we recorded our own versions of songs that were popular back then, we sometimes were told to just muck about with keyboards drums and whatever else we could make a tune out of.   Mrs G, made music fun, she talked passionately about musicians, singers and bands that she loved and had watched in the seventies and eighties.  She’d seen the Stones, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, David Bowie (in fact she said she saw Roxy Music and David Bowie on the same bill at a pub in Putney) and Simon and Garfunkel. 

If for some reason you needed to find Mrs G on a lunchtime, you would nine times out of ten find her in her office, feet on the desk, incense gently burning in the corner, and this playing on a cheap tape recorder.

A Case of You – Joni Mitchell (1971, Reprise Records, Taken from ‘Blue’)

Mrs G loved Joni Mitchell and spent almost an entire lesson once, telling her about the time she saw Joni live in Birmingham.  Mrs G lasted two years at our school, presumably she was fired for being too nice or for teaching us about David Bowie and his Berlin period rather than Mozart and his opium phase of 1768 (I have no idea when Mozart was alive). 

I also have no idea what happened to Mrs G after she left my school.  I hope she carried on teaching and I hope that she was the inspiration behind this version of ‘A Case of You’.  Perhaps James Blake wondered into her office one lunchtime looking for permission to use one of the keyboards and found Mrs G, feet on the desk.   Who knows.

A Case of You – James Blake (2011, Polydor Records, Taken from ‘Enough Thunder EP’)

There is one more song in my music library that has the name ‘Joni’ in the title and that is this

Joni – Braids (2016, Flemish Eye Records, Taken from ‘Companion’)

* Not her real name

** Also not her real name.

On Monday – Billy, who knows I’m waiting, but I love him endlessly.

100 Songs with One Word Titles (95 – 91)

The next five tracks in the rundown were apart from the first one, songs that I expected to do much better, two of them are stone cold indie pop classics, one is American alt rock at it finest and one is on the soundtrack to ‘The Smurfs Movie’ which of course essential viewing.  But let’s start with the one that did rather better than I expected, although it is course the best thing you will hear all day.

95. Vomit – Girls (2011, FantasyTrashcan Records, Taken from ‘Father Son Holy Ghost‘)

‘Vomit’ was the first single to be released from Girls’ second (and last?) album ‘Father Son Holy Ghost’ and is a sprawling seven minute slow building monolithic freakout of a tune.  Singer Chris Owens spends most of those seven minutes, sighing the lyrics, rather than actually singing them, as the band then all kick in with crunchy rock guitars, organ solos and twinkly percussion bits.  But when you think it can’t get any better a gospel choir jump in from left of screen and its just splendid.

94. Radio – Teenage Fanclub (1993, Creation Records, Taken from ‘Thirteen’)

Until the release of their fifth (sixth?) album Teenage Fanclub had never had a Top 30 hit (and even now they have only had one).  The closest that they had got was in June 1993, when ‘Radio’ backed unsurprisingly by a lot of radio play, rocketed to Number 31.  It’s odd because as good as ‘Radio’ is (and its very good indeed) its probably one of the bands weakest singles. Still saying that I expected it to be much higher in this list.

93. Big – New Fast Automatic Daffodils (1990, Play It Again Sam Records, Taken from ‘Pigeonhole’)

When I was 16 I had to do some coursework for my statistics GCSE.  We had to pick something on ordinary life and introduce statistics to it.  So I decided to show on a bar chart the bands that were most played by John Peel over a six week period (excluding sessions).  There in third place on that chart (behind The Fall and The Cure) were New Fast Automatic Daffodils.  My statistics teacher Mrs Bruce put a star by them and said “Did you make this name up?” 

92. 100% – Sonic Youth (1991, DGC Records, Taken from ‘Dirty’)

‘100%’ was the first Sonic Youth song that I properly loved.  It came out at a time when grunge was really popular in the UK and it was the start of a love affair that continues right up to today.  It was of course, the first single to be released from the bands seventh album ‘Dirty’ and was recorded largely as a tribute to a friend of the band who was murdered in armed robbery in 1991. Which I didn’t know until about five minutes ago.

91. Holiday – Vampire Weekend (2009, XL Records, Taken from ‘Contra’)

If you were in doubt, this is the one which features in ‘The Smurfs Movie’.  It’s the scene where the Smurfs have just arrived in New York and are travelling on top of a taxi to the house of Doogie Howser MD in order to rescue the Smurf who has fallen into a box of cosmetic paperwork.  What do you mean you’ve not seen it?  Seriously go watch it.

Nearly Perfect Albums – #27

Daydream Nation – Sonic Youth

When I was younger if anyone asked me what my favourite Sonic Youth album was I would always say ‘Sister’ because being an idiot I thought it was a more interesting answer than the correct answer.  Which is of course ‘Daydream Nation’ because that is the only answer you can give if you are asked that, admittedly, niche question.

 ‘Daydream Nation’ is essential, in fact its more than essential it’s the sound of American alt rock driving around in an open topped bus and announcing with some conviction that its about to change the face the music as we know it.    You only need about 50 seconds of album opener ‘Teenage Riot’ to know that but for the record I’ve never met a single person who has listened to this all the way through and not loved it.  Even if does call for J Masics of Dinosaur Jr to be made president.

Teenage Riot – Sonic Youth (1988, Enigma Records)

Its not just an alt rock album though.  God no.  It’s so much more than that.  At times it’s a proper hardcore punk album with songs that sneer and have ultra-quick drumming on it.  Then it will change gear and suddenly it’s a radio friendly pop album and just when you are used to that, Thurston Moore will up the feedback and open up his Big Box of My Bloody Valentine Effects Pedals and it’s a shoegaze record that features guitars that have been tortured with a rusty screwdriver. 

The Sprawl – Sonic Youth (1988, Enigma Records)

Then there are the vocals, one minute all melodic the next shouts and yelps, but it works magnificently. A perfect example of what I trying to explain can be heard on ‘Cross the Breeze’, which starts like a jangly indie pop record from the west coast of Scotland – well for the first thirty seconds at least after that it descends into frantic guitar solos that go off all over the place, drumming that sounds like a jackhammer digging up a road.  Then Kim Gordon’s vocals jump in, yelping a chorus and getting more insistent as the song goes on, and the music get gloriously chaotic all around her.

Cross the Breeze – Sonic Youth (1988, Enigma Records)

‘Hey Joni’ is another great example.  Which tricks you into thinking that this is going to be a slower more atmospheric track.  Then around 25 seconds it bursts into life and a punk rock song emerges.   Oh and around three minutes in is the greatest use of the words “Kick It” in a song ever, because it causes the band to knock it up another level of noise – yet despite all that, ‘Hey Joni’ is a wonderfully off kilter pop song.

Hey Joni – Sonic Youth (1988, Enigma Records)

For those of you who may never have spent an hour in a room with just ‘Daydream Nation’ for company, you are missing out.  It’s a total thrill, a record that redefined a scene and made a bunch of musicians sit up and take notice and most importantly it made them retune their guitars.