The music was a beautiful mess, the lyrics never threw anybody a bone, so while there was plenty to admire, the band didn't give us much to love. There was them, there was us, and there was no attempt to bridge the gap, in fact, one could argue that Sonic Youth intentionally incinerated it habitually prior to Daydream. To expand on that a bit, an epic, sleaze-up song like "Catholic Block" was obviously great for creating hype to the punk crowds who were disillusioned by the Replacements writing ballads on a major record label, but how far can an edgy buzz really take a band before it all just fizzles into a great big nothing? Sister's tracks had an endlessly engaging skeletal structure (as did Evol to a lesser extent) but when it was all said and done, there was no real meat on the bones. The old as time discussion almost all bands are forced to have at some point, "where do we go from here?" is certainly not a fun one, but the moment after Sister was released, it likely forced Sonic Youth's hand a bit in regard to awkwardly sitting down and having that talk, a talk that would lead to a break from their past in the form of Daydream Nation. However, the same reason some adherents prefer Sister (it really is a truly uncompromising vision of noise freakouts) is the same reason the walls were closing in around the band. Ultimately Sister's calculated maelstrom seems to exist today as a leap of faith that carved out a perfect landing spot for Daydream Nation, even if some some prefer it as a mutant companion piece. Sonic Youth never were as rowdy as they wanted us to think they were. There was an aesthetic scene dogma that did shadow the band wherever they went, but there was a subtle consistency to their work that they or their fans would loathe to admit, even if that consistency was rooted in carnage. Sister essentially swallowed up every wide-eyed hope or chimerical vision people held out for independent rock, and spit em up through their crashing guitar grinder.īut once you get past the glorious haze of noise on Sister, some inherent problems did begin to creep in, and to put it simply, Sister just didn't rock hard enough. This approach was pushed about as far as the band was willing to take it, but by this point Sonic Youth was already on the map as the enfant terrible new kid on the indie scene. The Sonic Youth foundation had already been laid down here, namely their two most enduring cornerstones: guitar tunings emerging out of the hosannas from the basement of hell and those mystifying time signatures that were impossible for anybody to pin down. Take Sister for example, the album that dropped a mere year before Daydream. But even pre-Daydream Sonic Youth as an idea was still pretty damn fascinating, brimming with passion and some wildly inventive musical ideas. To steal a quote from Michael Wincott's Top Dollar, the album Daydream Nation represents the moment where an idea becomes the institution, a concept explained half-memorably during his big Devil's Night speech in The Crow's finale. The World Looks Red/The World Looks Black Perfect Sound Forever: Sonic Youth- Daydream Nation revisited SONIC YOUTH
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