composed by Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley
Many terrific artists who never phone it in nonetheless make records I have not bought in twenty years. If Kim and Thurston’s split finishes Sonic Youth I still have many presumably great albums to catch up on, many of which may be better than this one which some early adopters thought was plenty craven in 1988. I have no dog in the “purity” fight, but I know nothing that encapsulates Sonic Youth as a sound idea better than this track, dead center of the album that preceded their decade with a “major label.” Those who thought they sold out to song form on Sister at the expense of their formative microtonal noise excursions may have missed how song form served the noise excursion here. “Total Trash” has words and a tune I would gladly hum for you, but they merely frame an instrumental breakdown where the massive tone cluster undergirding the whole track is driven so hard that when Steve Shelley’s drums drop out you envision a thousand-ton locomotive leaving the tracks and floating away. Comparably, I once saw Baryshnikov and Mark Morris spin in sequence, both effortlessly, except Baryshnikov appeared to have escaped Jupiter’s gravity rather than Earth’s.
Note: 25 secular essays (each one exactly 200 words long) about 25 songs, to appear one per day during Advent (or so) from Nov. 27 through Dec. 21.
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