song of the day: march 4/2011

Sonic Youth - Chapel Hill

Album: Dirty [1992]

sonic youth were one of the most unlikely success stories of underground american rock in the '80s. where contemporaries like R.E.M. were fairly conventional in terms of song structure and melody, sonic youth began their career by abandoning any pretense of traditional rock & roll conventions. borrowing heavily from the free-form noise experimentalism of the velvet underground and the stooges, and melding it with a performance art aesthetic borrowed from the new york post-punk avant-garde, sonic youth redefined what noise meant within rock & roll. they rarely rocked, though they were inspired directly by hardcore punk and post-punk, and their dissonance, feedback, and alternate tunings created a new sonic landscape that redefined what rock guitar could do. the band's trio of independent late-'80s records - especially "daydream nation" [1988] - became touchstones for a generation of indie rockers who either replicated the noise or reinterpreted it in a more palatable setting. as their career progressed, sonic youth grew more palatable as well, as their more free-form songs began to feel like compositions and their shorter works began to rock harder. such is the case with "chapel hill" for their second major-label album, "dirty". with this album, the band attempted to replicate the sloppy, straightforward sound of grunge rockers mudhoney and nirvana. the band had been supporting those two seattle-based groups for several years, and while the songs were hardly grunge, it was more pop-oriented and accessible than earlier sonic youth records. produced by butch vig, who also produced nirvana's "nevermind" and the smashing pumpkins' "siamese dream" (nice resume....), "dirty" became an alternative hit upon its summer 1992 release and the band became hailed as one of the godfathers of the alternative rock that had become the most popular form of rock music in the united states. heard today, "dirty" doesn't sound like a masterpiece (like "daydream nation" does) nor a gesture toward the mainstream audience - it just sounds like a damn good rock album, and on those terms it ranks with sonic youth's best work.

amazon