MOG

Sonic Youth - SYR7 & SYR8
(SYR, 2008)
SYR7: J'Accuse Ted Hughes
7.5 out of 10
SYR8: Ander Sider Af Sonic Youth (with Mats Gustafsson & Merzbow)
8 out of 10

At L.A.'s El Rey Theatre in 2003, the year after the release of Murray Street, I saw Sonic Youth play, amidst a full set, a song from that album called "Karenology." (It's called "Karen Revisited" on the tracklist; they've since retitled it.) Murray Street uses a relatively subdued palette for a band known for its tendency to freak out. The noise breakdown on "Karenology," despite being not unlike the ones on each of their other rock albums to that date, emphasizes the "control" in the controlled chaos that these NYC ghosts traffic in; in other words, it comes off as a quieter noise.

Not in concert, it didn't. I was so bowled over by the blast of sound that I used every last bit of my energy to all but cripple me to the floor. It's the most visceral reaction I've ever had at a concert, and even through it I never lost sight of the notion that it is skill, talent, and a virtuosity of listening that enables each moment of this pleasure. What could be, for this band, a rote exercise is instead, still, a moment of pure expression and sound sculpture that can't be repeated.

I've seen Sonic Youth play seven times, and though nothing's quite matched that punch in the gut, they're still my favorite live band with a conventional rock lineup, and this style of breakdown is their best trick — songus interruptus. It seems due to Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo spending a great amount of time exploring the dynamic of free improvisation in various side groups, together but mostly separately; probably one (or two, or n) hundred official audio documents of these ongoing performances exist. But in the late '90s, feeling that they also needed a freer creative outlet in the main, Sonic Youth began releasing a series of experimental, mostly improvised musics on a new imprint called SYR.

To me, the highlight of the SYR series remains the 1999 double-CD SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century, but that's nearly unfair to say. Among all the rest, SYR4 has the highest-level pedigree of guests — Takehisa Kosugi, Christian Marclay, William Winant, Christian Wolff and soon-to-be-member Jim O'Rourke — as well as having the most inspiring concept, being comprised of their unconventional readings of compositions by John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Reich, Kosugi, Wolff and more. It's one of their best, most inspiring recordings, a flawless and educational effort of pop-free 20th century music by America's foremost out-rock elevators, and I can't say that about the rest of the entries in the series.

What I can say is that SYR7 and SYR8 are the two worthiest "ordinary" SYR releases thus far. The three entries preceding SYR4 went a long way towards keeping the assertion alive that no matter how consistently vibrant they remained as a live force, Sonic Youth were still relevant and spontaneous in terms of what they chose to document and press. SYR7 and SYR8 are coming out a decade later, and they do nothing if not reassert the same by representing said decade with a total of three more long-form experimental tracks illuminating their continued studies in the craft.

The no-CD (but vinyl, mp3) SYR7's first side is a recording of a live performance at England's All Tomorrow's Parties in the year 2000. For this set, they performed most of the then-upcoming, soon-to-be-controversial, excellent NYC Ghosts & Flowers LP, which brought a combination of their sonically abrasive and beat-lyric elements to the front and so ended up being, arguably, their most confrontational song-based record. (Seeing NYC as an original, more pop-oriented extension of SYR4 is not a bad way to go.) But before they did that, they opened with an improvised piece called "J'Accuse Ted Hughes." It starts with a consistent pulse in C that almost suggests a languid crawl towards a rendition of "The Sprawl" or "'cross the Breeze" from Daydream Nation. But no — far more emblematic of where Sonic Youth was at the time, it's a 23-minute drone peppered in the center with way strange lyrics from Kim Gordon, simple and minimal but chilling and pointless to write out. Its volume and intensity is highest beginning about 2/3 through, and even if you haven't experienced their feedback/distortion baths live, it is pretty easy to get a semblance if you listen to "J'Accuse" loud enough. The manner in which the drone sputters out into its more pointillist denouement is even more satisfying than its climax.

"J'Accuse" is backed with — created for the backdrop for a planned fashion show that never happened — another drone, the 19-minute "agnes b. Musique." It was crafted in the studio in 2003, during Jim O'Rourke's brief tenure as the fifth full-fledged member of Sonic Youth, and yet actually comes across as more arbitrarily designed than "J'Accuse." The engaging moments in "agnes b." are fleeting, and though the control exercised by a studio mix lends it a warmer ambience than that of "J'Accuse," its overall effect leaves something more to be desired, mostly ambient but at times distracting from that end, or not immediate enough to stay in the forefront. The first few minutes, in particular, seem milquetoast compared to when the drone really gets going. But it's still more than a B-side excuse to have "J'Accuse" as an A-side; it's very pretty, and it's much, much better than, say, any of the auto-playing music on agnesb.com.

The no-vinyl (but CD, mp3) SYR8 is titled Andre Sider Af Sonic Youth, or "Other Sides of Sonic Youth." In 2005 at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, the five-piece band invited two of their most illustrious friends to join them, the Swedish reed-player Mats Gustafsson and the Japanese noise king Masami Akita (a.k.a. Merzbow). For this one-hour performance, they devised an ingeniously simple arrangement of adding players every five minutes, then subtracting them until only one is left. As a result, it begins with Kim and drummer Steve Shelley on stage, then the rest of the band one by one, then Mats Gustafsson, then Merzbow; then one by one they drop out until it's just Mats and Merzbow, and then Merzbow all alone. The result of Andre Sider is a testament to the many-splendored effects of a successful structured improvisation, and a surprisingly enduring one at that. The rhyme and reason of each player's contribution is only more penetrable with each listen, and by the time all seven musicians are on stage, it is fucking extreme. The avant-rock riffage and abstract buzzing of the first half morphs into the high-voltage noise of the second with zero difficulty, and Merzbow, the one-man maelstrom, closes the set by veritably equalling the volume and nuance of all seven players at the peak.

Both this set and most of what comprises Sonic Youth's career trajectory, whether through their actions or the selection of their collaborators, define relentlessness. It is astounding that they still have such a following to do these things in front of. They challenge and challenge; they're business savvy, but the majority of their work could never be called pandering to the masses. (The image and caption used for SYR7 is from an NME cover story.) And still, giving no easy answers to the large Denmark festival crowd, no recognizable riffs, you can hear cheering erupt out of sheer enthusiasm. I wish I'd been there; I'd have been one of those voices. Instead, I gratefully listen at home.

-Spencer Owen