Lee Ranaldo – Electric Trim – Album Review

Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com

https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2017/09/10/lee-ranaldo-electric-trim-album-review/

Album Review: Lee Ranaldo - Between The Times & The Tides

Review for www.spillmagazine.com  http://www.spillmagazine.com/album_reviews.html#Picture2629

Album Review: Sonic Youth – Dirty

As grunge took off in the early 90s, Sonic Youth got Butch Vig to produce 1992’s Dirty. Opening track (and first single) 100% is a somewhat sludgy track. It’s followed up by Kim Gordon singing a sort of riot grrrl anthem Swimsuit Issue. Far better is the slow-building Theresa’s Sound-world, perfectly paced guitars over a moody Thurston Moore vocal in the ‘verse’ portion of the song which builds to a climax as Steve Shelley pounds the drums and the guitars go apeshit before returning to the opening motif. It’s a perfectly constructed song, almost like a 90s Velvet Underground.

Shoot is a relatively low key track with a (mostly) understated Kim Gordon vocal, before Lee Ranaldo gets his curtain call on Wish Fulfillment. Sugar Kane pounds its way along with heavenly riffs and a nice freakout in the middle, while Youth Against Fascism growls along nicely.

On The Strip returns to Theresa’s Sound-world territory, Gordon on vocals this time, while later Purr kicks up a real storm, riffing along at breakneck speed.

Although overlong at 15 tracks and 59 minutes, and a little patchy, the actual musicianship on these songs, with some superb midsections (Chapel Hill amongst them) that set them apart from their contemporaries.

Sonic Youth. Sonic death?

Article for www.meg.ie

Album Review: Various Artists – Fifteen Minutes: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground

The early 90s saw US underground rock godfathers the Velvet Underground finally receive the full-blown tribute by some of the early 90s European and American indie fraternity.

The album kicks off with a bang with Nirvana’s powerful version of Here She Comes Now where Kurt Cobain and co build up from a low growl to a visceral roar, vocally and musically finishing in a haze of distortion. Forgotten shoegazers Swervedriver take the once muted Jesus and transform it into a blissed-out, distorted anthem, all mumbled vocals and searing guitars.

Lee Ranaldo sounds unrecognizable from his dayjob in Sonic Youth as he slide-guitars his way through Stephanie Says. Things get really demented with Fatima Mansions’ electro-pop version of Lady Godiva’s Operation, Cathal Coughlan barking the lyrics like the inmate of a correctional facility, as chainsaws perform the ‘incisions’ in the lyrics!

Some of it doesn’t quite work, Echo and the Bunnymen turn Foggy Notion into one of their latter-day chug-along rockers. Stronger are the Wedding Present’s faithful homage to She’s My Best Friend and at the other extreme, the Screaming Trees’ desecration of What Goes On .

Like any tribute album, it’s an uncohesive and at times incoherent listen. But like any good tribute album, this makes you dig out the original material so in this regard, it succeeds.

Album Review: Sonic Youth – Washing Machine

The great thing with Sonic Youth is they have so many albums at this stage, all of which are of a reasonably good quality so there’s always going to be the overlooked album which rewards a bit of delving into. In this case I’m taking Washing Machine as said album. After a brief flirtation with the mainstream with albums Goo and Dirty, they followed up with the poorly received Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star. This album is denser than the 3 aforementioned albums, with more layers to decipher.

The album opens with blistering opener becuz. It’s sung by Kim Gordon, but her more dissonant tendencies are kept in check here. It’s a good driving rock song with a fair degree of squalling guitar noise in the bridge. Later in the song there is a great melodic outttro. Junkie’s Promise follows, a sort of tough number sung by Thurston Moore. The album becomes calmer with Lee Ranaldo’s Saucer-Like which features great guitar work before a dischordant ending.

After the noisy title track, things get calmer still with Thurston’s unwind. The odd nursery rhyme sounding Little Trouble Girl follows, featuring not only Kim Gordon but also Kim Deal (Pixies). The melody of this is rather child-like, and something which I can’t explain about the tone of Deal’s vocals sounds very 90s.

After some noisy, more difficult tracks the album finishes with the 19 minute long opus that is The Diamond Sea. It starts off as a fairly conventional Thurston rock song, with a good melody and nice guitar parts, before the guitars take over and transform the song into a kind of noise piece. It’s kind of in the vein of the Velvet Underground’s Sister Ray, except with a sweeter melody and less drug references.

Washing Machine is a lot less immediate than Sonic Youth's early 90s album. It's dense and can be hard work to listen to, but it's an important step on the journey to the artist they have become.

Album Review: Sonic Youth – Murray Street

This 2002 Sonic Youth album was a return to form as far as I was concerned. It’s very definitely a more mature Sonic Youth, perhaps due to the presence of Jim O’Rourke, who had joined the band for this album.

There are only seven songs on this album but the first 3 (all sung by Thurston Moore) are damn near perfect. Empty Page is probably the poppiest one here, which starts with a fairly unadorned clean-sounding guitar in the verses before leading into a slightly heavier chorus. The whole thing is quite concise and is over in just over four minutes. Although Sonic Youth were no slouches when it came to guitars before, they really excel themselves here. O’Rourke’s presence on bass frees up Kim Gordon to join Moore and Lee Ranaldo on guitar. Disconnection Notice is a slower, more complex track which unfolds slowly with a taut guitar line leading the track and the rest of the band joining in, driving the track on to a career high (and there are many for this band). What makes this track particularly enjoyable is that they threaten noise and feedback without delivering, which makes the track tense but thrilling.

Rain On Tin is like Television’s Marquee Moon updated for the 21st century. Guitars in the midsection of this song reach Verlaine-esque heights from about 02.40 on before returning to the structure of this song. The track is almost 8 minutes long but it doesn’t feel like it, thanks the superb musicianship displayed.

After this the album takes a bit of a dip. Karen Revisited, is a Ranaldo-sung track, which starts out fine, till we get to a tedious noise section in the middle, which is dragged out for the remainder of the 11 minute long track. Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style is a definite improvement, a bit more rockist with it’s Lou Reed references, before climaxing in a noise-fest at the end.

Kim Gordon gets to sing Plastic Sun, which is a typical Gordon shouty song, but she also gets to sing Sympathy for the Strawberry, a longer drawn out song, in a similar vein to last year’s Massage The History off The Eternal. For the first 3 songs alone, it’s worth checking out.