Sonic Youth
Nurse

I found this review a wonderfully written piece of prose, but a bit of a Jackson Pollock painting, and however hard I look at it, I'm still not really clear what the new Sonic Youth album sounds like... have they moved on? Sideways? Are they trying to experiment in the context of today, or could this record have existed with the technology/knowledge that existed within the band 15 years ago? Are there any SONGS, or is is more instrumentally oriented? Is it a new record for a new decade, or a good quality Sonic Youth record that explores much the same territory as the rest of their records? Saying Sonic Youth have done an 'art' album is a bit like saying Lucian Freud has done a painting... of COURSE they've done an art album.. that's what they DO... The reviewer is evidently a fan... but I'm interested to know... will this in any way appeal to people who AREN'T diehard fans?

blah blah blah...do you actually need someone to describe what Sonic Youth sound like?

I'll believe that when I hear it.

*Swoosh* - the sound of something going over your head.

In this writer’s opinion, the LP is an extension of Sonic Youth’s artistic legacy.
The review actually expounds – something which you’d have detected if your brains didn’t consist of swiss cheese - that the LP * comes close* to being a landmark album on par with Daydream Nation on an artistic merit. At no point did it suggest that Nurse had scaled the mantle where Daydream Nation resides or suggest that SY were EVER going to be that culturally ‘‘relevant’’ again (and how completely fucking numbskulled you’d have to be to even assume such a thing), and… as for your other trite observations, in those relatively inconsequential realms of ‘‘relevance’’ and ‘‘importance’’, the review was written from the perspective of a person listening to the album For What It Is today/three thousand years ago/a hundred years into the future; a brilliant exposition of densely textured, absorbing sounds, the knife-edge, rapier-satire of Moore’s and Gordon’s reflections on A Modern World and *duh* multifaceted, winding song structures broken by noisejams. LIKE SONIC YOUTH DO. This warranted five stars.


‘Pretentious’…, isn’t this a little tired now?
If by 'pretentious' you imply writing that reflects the writer's experience of a music in an intelligent, passionate, and innovative way, and a way that could, feasibly, annoy you, then just don’t take the trouble to perplex your vacuous little craniums again. Read the NME, watch cd:uk… shoot yourself straight between the eyes.

I get the feeling that a vast majority of the people that make these prosaic, futile and ultimately regressive comments on this website are trainspotting, vinyl-hording dullards who, on all accounts, come across as emotional and intellectual dwarves.
‘Pompey Ruffian’ have you ever had an emotional experience? To quote an ex-member of the Lollies: ‘‘Or are you just one of those tedious sad indie boy fans who thinks all music can be reduced to facts and figures and top ten lists and the alphabetical order of your record collection? Who dismisses any kind of subjective description of emotional connection to music as "lifestyle"?’’

You all sound the same. Baa, baa, baa.

And there was me thinking:
a) people who read dis are more interested in music, than music journalism.
AND
b) would recognise much more nick kent than lester bangs.
AND
c) people would note the irony of being a critics, critic. a critique of a critique, brings things down to the level of being a voyeur of a voyeur, and where's the pleasure in that? unless of course said voyeur is a very beautiful person pleasuring themselves rather seductively. but to watch, is not to participate and to share is to not truly give, but it's better than just being all take, take, take.

There is no need to be facetious... it makes you look silly. I own Sonic Youth music (which I like a lot). I know how much Sonic Youth stole from Glenn Branca (who I like a lot), and also like Can (even more than the others), who were screwing around with dissonance in 1968.

When you overpack a piece with simile and metaphor it can become hard to see whatever core of plain english lies beneath... and so it takes a long time to read... perhaps in common with much of the audience, my attention span for staring at text on a computer screen is pretty damn small... and so I'm not personally keen on things that I cannot skim-read. I have no need to read about metaphors about Sonic Youth... I KNOW what they sound like... they've been around for decades... what I DID want to know was whether they'd moved on to some new territory... which you didn't tell me in your review.

Dissonance was experiemented with in classical in the beginning of the 20th century, and to my mind, no guitar band has even come within a million miles of the way, say, Stravinsky used it... but maybe Sonic Youth aren't ever going to be the band to take such experimentation to the next level. If Matt Bellamy and Kim Gordon had a child, maybe that'd be the ticket...

I like the sleeve

release date is on the review.

What? So, you when you read a music mag (mmm, let's say, nme), you don't wince / get fucked off / become even the teensiest bit annoyed when you just happen upon a hilariously/chronically dire review, not whatsoever (nor even at how blatantly clueless and knowledgeless a review's press release-cribbing author may be).....not ever.....cos it's just how they chose to write their review. Of course.
I'll keep you to that..

Unless there's a difference for you, between 'insulting' and - like most of the responses here - 'criticising' (with Reasons! & everything!) and being able to discuss and articulate shit more than ye olde replies on these boards of the one-line "You're full of shit" level........

...um, all I can say is "ditto"

Wonderful writing (by the bonkers Mr Gregory) and Wonderful Critiquing (by several posters on here). This thread represents the best of DiS. Fuck futile arguments over Keane or other such bland non-intellectual noneties . It doesn't matter and'll only end in a stalemate.

This shit's where it's at.

I'd much rather read an arty-farty, thesaurus-utilising, allusion laden creation like this (and that's praise-not criticism- despite how it may sound) than the bland journalism by numbers found in certain indie-bopper rags where the writers only got their jobs through Cuntish bourgeois nepotism not because of any talent.

Matthew Gregory's journalism is indeed pretentious and self-congratulatory. But it is also innovative, irreverent, highly original and adeptly astute.

If he's not written the new 'Naked Lunch' by the time he's 30 it'll only because he can't write in a straightjacket. Once again, high-praise to the madman.

"Matthew Gregory's journalism is indeed pretentious and self-congratulatory. But it is also innovative, irreverent, highly original and adeptly astute."

On the money. And that's why it creates simultaneous love and hatred. I can't decide whether I want to shake his hand or kick him really hard in the bollocks first. I think that's a good thing though. At least it's not mediocre, as you say. Except that ocean metaphor, cor dear...

If you like Burroughs, he's in The Black Rider at the Barbican...

http://www.barbican.org.uk/generic/details.asp?eventID=2191&artFormID=4&artForm=theatre&disciplineName=eventList