Alternative Weekend: Focus on ‘Sonic Youth’

I have been posting most weekends using @detlev’s #metalweekend tag, but my main love of music is progressive and alternative music. Some of my posts have included these songs, but I feel they are not keeping with the spirit of metal.

I will continue to post article’s using #metalweekend occasionally but feel I have more to offer regarding these other genre’s that I am more familiar with.

Introducing #alternativeweekend. Post an article that highlights THREE great songs that are either progressive or alternative and use the tag #alternativeweekend or use the ‘Focus on’ series if you like. There are no rules, just make your own!

If you have a short story or something to offer regarding an opinion on your songs, then share it with us!

I don’t watch much TV, usually a little at night before I go to sleep. The amount of commercials that are blasted at us now is unreal and I tend to channel switch when whatever it is I am watching ends and they start.

Sometimes I’m not quick enough or I’m in a semi-trance before I realise its time to switch and hear things like ‘stolen music’ in some of them.

Commercials are always stealing parts of popular songs, but occasionaly they go for something more offbeat.

This commercial got my ear. Surely that isn't Sonic Youth? Their sound is quite unmistakable. Nobody but nobody sounds like this band.

This is the commercial in question advertising 'Marc Jacobs' perfume. Does that really fit this band that is so far from the mainsteam, it's practically out of sight?

The sound of those out of tune guitars provoked me to write this weeks 'Focus on' article. Prepare yourself for strange music and sounds.

Sonic Youth – Teenage Riot (Daydream Nation – 1988)

I only really gelled with a couple of the bands’ albums. They got much more mainstream after ‘Daydream Nation’ but even so I failed to gel with the later material.

You can hear that telltale guitar sound that is in the commercial quite clearly in ‘Teenage Riot’

Sonic Youth - Schizophrenia (Sister – 1987)

Now, this is more like it. I initially found the ‘Sister' album extremely inaccessible and remember chatting to @trolleydave about it at the time.

He told me to check out the later material if I was having problems listening to the early albums. I didn’t, and persevered and it got through to me eventually.

Distorted guitars rule when they resonate with your brain! Listen to the end from around 3:40.

Sonic Youth - Pipeline/Kill Time (Sister – 1987)

This one really gets trippy after a while. A few songs they did were like this, they just go off in another direction into complete madness.

Only for real fans or first-timers that are up in the skies somewhere.

Sonic Youth - Beauty Lies in the Eye (Sister – 1987)

I can’t describe Kim Gordon, the bass player as a singer, more a talker. She did feature on the vocals of several songs on this and ‘Daydream Nation’, I love the eeriness and melancholy undertones of this particular track.

So that’s three out of four songs from the ‘Sister’ album. No prizes on which is my favourite then.

There’s no doubt that Sonic Youth are an acquired taste. I do love bands that are different than the mainstream and these guys are about as far out as it gets.