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Beck, Sonic Youth, Sneaker Pimps, Built to Spill, Elliott Smith with Quasi Champoeg State Park Amphitheater, Interstate 5 exit 278, 224-4400 Moore says he was flattered to be name-checked in the Sleater-Kinney song "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" and that Sonic Youth agreed to play the upcoming Bumbershoot in Seattle only if it could share the bill with Sleater-Kinney and Built to Spill. |
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Opportunity Rocks |
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Photo: Mike Hashimoto |
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To Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, selling records isn't selling out. By Richard Martin, rmartin@wweek.com |
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From the year punk broke to the year alternative music choked, Sonic Youth has found itself at the forefront of nearly every rock revolution. After 15 years, it'd be easy to relax and enjoy its status as one of America's most influential bands, but the New York quartet keeps prodding the boundaries, in search of hidden passages to new musical realms. Individually and collectively, guitarist and vocalist Thurston Moore, bassist and vocalist Kim Gordon, guitarist Lee Ranaldo and drummer Steve Shelley seem to be constantly at work. Side projects abound: Gordon plies the scratchy punk trade in Free Kitten; Shelley runs the label Smells Like Records and drums for Cat Power and Two Dollar Guitar; and Ranaldo and Moore dabble in various free-jazz and experimental endeavors. Lately, the four have reconvened as Sonic Youth, procured their first-ever permanent studio space, founded an eponymous imprint and released two EPs of probing, non-vocal excursions. "This year, we've decided to work at a casual pace, doing these recordings and stuff," Moore says from the Manhattan apartment he shares with wife Gordon and their infant daughter, Coco. "But it's a full schedule. Sometimes I find myself overextended and I have to cross things off. Mike Watt was really an influence on me when he said, 'If you're not playin', you're payin'.' It's just what we do. We have the ability to work, and we definitely don't want to rest on [our] laurels." As such, Sonic Youth opted to form its own label and issue its avant-garde recordings rather than write and record another batch of edgy pop songs for a follow-up to the 1995 DGC collection, Washing Machine. On SYR1, the quartet engages in richly textured jams and sparse noise workouts. The nearly seven-minute closer, "Mieux: De Corrosion," melds feedback, loops and tinny percussion into an ultra-postmodern collage that's as frenzied and cantankerous as a midtown Manhattan traffic snarl at rush hour. The even lengthier "Anagrama" skirts along rock's edge more familiarly, layering chimed guitar notes over a meandering rhythm. Throughout, the music alludes to the instrumental segments of past Sonic Youth songs while reflecting the improvisational voyages Moore has undertaken with a cadre of respected outré artists, such as John Fahey and Nels Cline. Moore says he's attracted to free jazz in part because of its inaccessibility to mainstream listeners. "Free improvisation is a music that is something you can hold up and say, 'Here's this sophisticated genre we can get involved with that still has a value that once existed in punk rock,'" he explains. "But you'll never be able to commodify it because it's just too far-out. And it's not just noise-wank. It's real, personal music." Not that he sees his or Sonic Youth's commercial successes as something to be frowned upon. In fact, Moore is just as likely to attach his name to superstar projects as he is to join an underground avant-garde musician on stage at New York's Knitting Factory. Recently, he collaborated with Watt, Shelley, Mudhoney's Mark Arm, Sean Ono Lennon and original Iggy & the Stooges bassist Ron Ashton in recording songs for the soundtrack to a forthcoming Todd Haynes film, produced by Michael Stipe, about the glam-rock era that's based loosely on the friendship of David Bowie and Iggy Pop. And when it comes to Sonic Youth and punk in general, Moore says there's no such thing as "selling out." "To me, it's not something to be controlled," he says. "Record companies don't really own the music. They just own the recordings. I've had this debate with Steve Shelley whenever all these different K-Tel compilations all over the world want to use a Sonic Youth song on their modern-rock anthology records that they sell in supermarkets. They're called like 'Heavy Rock U.S.A.,' and it'll be the Chili Peppers, Bush and that kind of crap, and then they'll ask for [the Sonic Youth song] 'Sugar Cane.' And I'm like, 'Yeah! Our commodity is the recording of that song.' And Steve's like, 'It's disgusting that we're on these records.' But you're not selling your soul. That recording is not your soul." In music, as in business, Moore is intent on keeping an open mind. Asked what the new Sonic Youth recordings represent to him, Moore provides a neat capsule summary. "It's constant musical exploration on our part," he says. "No matter what the situation is, from recording an album for Geffen to doing something in a different context, like one of us playing with somebody else, we really don't draw lines." |
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