Adrift On the Sea of No Wave: Part II
Sonic Youth: Sonic Youth EP
Alright, this is a band that I'm relatively familiar with, but an album that I've never heard before. I love their debut LP so I have high hopes for this one. I've just heard the first song, and my hopes are being fulfilled, so I'm gonna leave you for a moment while I take the rest of it in...
...Alright, I probably could have started after hearing the first song, but I love that picture and will use it whenever I can. If you don't like it, then suck my balls.
Well, I kinda dug it at first, but after a while I started to tune out. The songs were repetitive and just kind of dragged on for way too long, so I went back to listening to Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Good thing too, cause I went from being sort of indifferent to them at first, to thinking they were actually pretty cool, and by the end I thought they were f
ucking fantastic. Well, out of respect for Sonic Youth I'm gonna give this album a second chance tomorrow...
...Good thing I gave this another chance, I haven't given this another full spin yet, but I'm already digging this a lot more than yesterday. Maybe I was just burned out on artiness or something. The atmosphere is definitely different than on their first full length. That one had a dark and reverb ridden production, while this one has an almost normal production. Instead of dark and creepy, this album has a sort of laid back, eerie, dreamlike quality that is intriguing.
I wasn't wrong on my original take. This album definitely likes repetition. Of course, that seems to be par for the course for these no wave bands. Much of the rhythms on this album are either funky bass lines or African folk drumming that seem to be pretty simple and are repeated over and over again. Or at least the stereotype of African folk drumming that I have in my head. Must be a Talking Heads influence. The guitars sound pretty different. Sometimes they even sound like bells. Cool. I'm sure there's a lot more weirdness that I'm missing though since my attention span isn't so great.
I also don't think I was wrong in saying that some of the songs on here go on for too long. Only three of the songs on here really sound particularly good at the moment and I don't know if there's anything truly great on here, though "Burning Spear" and "I Dreamed I Dream" come close. The rest are certainly entertaining, but only for a little while, then they start to get old. As a whole it's sort of unfocused, which isn't really all that surprising given that this was a band based around improvised live performances. Still, all in all it's a good first step and I'm glad I gave this a try.