![]() ![]() Washing Machine starts on the promising Becuz. ![]() The entire 2002 record moves between alternative rock, progressive experimentation, and hard rock – listenable but not memorable. Murray Street’s opening track is basic alternative rock until it turns into strange experimentation of screeches, I am not able to listen to. Tracks like Poison Arrow or Antenna are easy to listen to but not memorable. As for the other tracks on the record, they have been a more endurable challenge to listen to than very early LPs, but are overshadowed by other bands who move in the alternative and indie rock circles today – which is apparently the audience that the Sonic Youth is attempting to penetrate now. ![]() But it fails to stick the landing and, instead, sounds like forced attempt to be punchy and provocative. And so, it is on tracks like Ani-Orgasm, which desperately tries to hang on to the hard-core punk vibes the band resonated earlier without effort. But as it often happens when a band, with a certain reputation, ages and gets further away from the youthful success of the earlier days, trying to keep up with the past can sound torturous. Here, the noisy cacophony has faded into the background a little, making the album more approachable. So, when the time came, I gave the latest Sonic Youth record, The Eternal, a spin. It is kind of like looking at a piece of modern art trying hard to grasp the meaning of it, but somehow a bunch of screwdrivers arranged to a triangle do not make a lot of sense and are not particularly interesting (I’m referring to a real-life experience here).Īfter failing to get into the band’s earlier no-wave records, which to me sound more like a random recording of noises coming out of instruments the way they never should, I decided to approach things a little differently. The albums sound like they were recorded in an outburst manner of experimentation and maybe require a special state of mind to be listened to. However, the percussive influences of Richard Edson on the debut and the funky bassline kicking off The Good and The Bad, are more engaging but quickly disappear into sonic chaos. With primitive and random instrumentation, the albums sound like they were recorded in a kind of drug-induced haze – and maybe need exactly that to be an enjoyable listening experience. The minimal tonal range and repetitiveness throughout the band’s self-titled recording and the studio album Confusion is Sex, are not up my alley. The wistful tone of Croce’s song stamps those seconds in eternity, highlighting why people record themselves skating in the first place: so people will believe all the tall tales they’ve been told.Okay, the early no-wave stuff reminds me of the time when I was preparing for my SWANS interview. As the video ends, the song shifts to Croce’s “Time in a Bottle,” and the video slows down to show just how many times Mullen’s board twists and flips in the air, and just how many seconds he spends floating right above the fray. Jim Croce’s crooning voice and honky tonk piano in “You Don’t Mess Around With Jim” heightens all the Paul Bunyan aspects of Mullen’s own renown. The amount of coordination and daredevil disregard that went into his tricks made him something of a folk hero if there wasn’t video evidence of his complex maneuvers, it would all seem fake. We wouldn’t have the kickflip, flatground ollie, 360 flip, and more, without his contributions. Rodney Mullen is skateboarding’s great pioneering experimentalist. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |