Monday morning on the bus. My face feels really dry despite the after shave. Mouth kind of tastes like cold coffee. The newsprint smell coming off my newspaper is already giving me a headache. Something or another ends and my iPod rings up "Total Trash" by Sonic Youth.
Needless to say, I had a very productive day on Monday.
I graded lots of paper while listening to the strange assortment of SY on my iPod (Daydream Nation, Rather Ripped, Goo, and Murray Street). I listened to "Total Trash" a few more times, astonished as always that such a thing was actually composed by human beings. I mean, Thurston Moore is a man with a memory like mine. But whereas I forget my own fucking birthday, he can remember who has to claim the feedback squeal in "Candle." The simple factness of SY astonishes me.
Also, I had/have/will have a huge crush on Kim Gordon.
Anyway, I listened to Murray Street for the first time in years. I was astonished (again) at the first song, "The Empty Page." I didn't remember this song at all. I guess I only think of Murray Street as the one with "Sympathy for the Strawberry" and "Rain on Tin" on it. But "The Empty Page" defies normal SY distinctions. Think about those opening chords. They're clean, distinguishable. They seem to bear some resemblance to standard tuning. There's even an irristable hook embedded in there.
Look, the thing that makes Sonic Youth the force that they have become is their ability to both melt and solidify silly things like melody, chord progressions, and time signatures. They belong to one of the most elite clubs around: Bands Who Don't Produce Derivative Copycats. No one else sounds like SY because it's impossible to sound like them without actually, you know, having Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, and Lee Renaldo in your band. There are very few bands who can claim this status. But "The Empty Page" is surprising only because of its utter lack of surprises. Sure there is that awesome guitar battle between Moore and Renaldo in the middle of the song. But it's more gorgeous and uplifting than actually abrasive. For fuck's sake, they played the song on Carson Daley's show! The rest of the song foregrounds a kind of nostalgia that bubbles up sometimes in their work. Those opening lines are pretty telling: "These are the words/But not the truth/God bless them all when they speak to you." The song is a weird homage to attempts, to effort, to potential. After all, isn't that white a blank page symbolizes more than anything else?
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