Review Summary: This album opened an expressway to my skull.
Sonic Youth are quite possibly the most important indie rock band whose name isn’t
the Velvet Underground; they’ve influenced Lord knows how many indie acts in the 90s, perhaps most famously
Nirvana, and I can certainly see why. At their best, their songwriting was among the most purposeful I’ve come across in noise rock, and I’ve yet to hear any other band that so carefully threaded the needle between atonality and melody. It wasn’t always so; their first two albums,
Confusion is Sex and
Bad Moon Rising, clearly draw from New York’s no wave scene, and my thoughts on the scene are as follows: it’s either the most interesting thing to come out of New York that isn’t Broadway or
Talking Heads, or it’s interesting only from an intellectual standpoint, and their first two LPs are most certainly the latter to my mind. Their music was steadily getting more structured with each album, however, and
EVOL was only the most recent development on that front, with new drummer Steve Shelley completing the Sonic Youth lineup for the remainder of their time together. The core of the band was always bassist and feminist icon Kim Gordon, guitarist and aspiring beat poet Lee Ranaldo, and guitarist and pretentious dickhead Thurston Moore, but until 1985 they’d been cycling through several drummers until Shelley joined, and except for the addition of
Pavement bassist Mark Ibold, the lineup was stable all the way until their disbandment.
“Tom Violence” is as good an opening statement as any, and provides a good idea of what Sonic Youth were about at the time; they were a band who were somehow able to make listenable songs out of the weirdest, most unorthodox tuning schemes. Imagine what
Joy Division’s
Unknown Pleasures might sound like if all the punk trappings were stripped away, and that’s basically this song, and indeed a good deal of the rest of the record at large. The song’s also an excellent showcase of Shelley’s percussive talent, giving the band a sort of vitality that feels much needed after
Bad Moon Rising. “Tom Violence” is quite the tone setter, a moody, midtempo song that cultivates an air of suspense, especially a minute in, when it sounds like it’s building to something and makes a whole to-do about it for an entire minute before returning to the chord progression that it opened on. Might fit the lyrics, too; Sonic Youth’s lyricism is often oblique at the best of times, but it reads to me like an abstract poem about domestic abuse; the line “find it in the father, find it in the girl” is as unnerving now as it was the first time I heard it. “Shadow of a Doubt” is much more subdued, to the point where bassist Kim Gordon whispers the lyrics. The song’s only about strangers on a train bumping into each other, but there’s something about Gordon’s breathless delivery that gives the music a strong sense of danger, and it builds to a swell that it threatens to deliver on, like something of consequence is happening, but it suddenly stops and continues as it started.
Out of all the track listing, “Starpower” is easily the most indicative of the direction Sonic Youth was to take in the late 80s and early 90s. It’s not
Daydream Nation levels of polish, but it’s certainly the most conventionally structured song on the album, though not without its own quirks. The melody Kim Gordon sings is a nice, solid foundation for a pop song, though it’ll do just as nicely for post-punk: A♯, G♯, F#, ascend to C#. The melody that opens the song almost mirrors what Gordon sings, but it’s only slightly off: A♯, G♯, D, a lone sneaky D♯, and down to C♯. Did I say only slightly? I mean it feels wonky as sin, at least to my ears, and I mean it in a good way. It’s a testament to how Sonic Youth were so playful with their tuning that a single half step can make a listener lose their balance. As for the lyrics, for once there’s nothing moody about them: by themselves, they paint a simple love story that would be completely innocent if it weren’t for the verse “she knows how to make love to me,” but the delivery’s what gives it its power.
Firstly, there’s the contrast between the words clearly being written by a man, and the final recording being sung by a woman. Not at all sure how to describe the effect achieved with that dichotomy, but it’s sung by a woman, so of course my pansexual brain is totally going to think of this song as a lesbian anthem. The music also gives some depth: two verses in, and Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo suddenly trail off on some textural and indistinctly menacing tangent before suddenly becoming a proper song again, then ending with dissonance that modestly peters out. If I had to guess, I’d say that the music might’ve been intended to throw some doubt on the narrator’s apparently pure intentions and their declaration of starstruck love, like there might be some sort of selfishness to their words that only the music can tell. But it’s also just as likely, if not more, that it’s simply a love song that just so happens to be backed by baleful and slightly lopsided music.
“In the Kingdom #19” is the most active song on the album just for how chaotic it is. It’s also the first time Lee Ranaldo actually mattered, beginning a tradition of Ranaldo having a song to himself per album, with the exception of
Daydream Nation having three songs with him on lead vocals. Ranaldo shows sensibilities in his writing that differ strongly from Moore and Gordon; where they either rhymed or at least sang with a particular meter, Ranaldo deals in free verse. The song is about a motor accident, the subject most likely being
Minutemen frontman D. Boon, considering that the Minutemen’s bassist Mike Watt features here; in fact, this was among his first recordings since Boon’s untimely demise, because he would’ve quit music if it weren’t for Sonic Youth requesting his presence.
Though the lyrics are somewhat obtuse because it’s a Sonic Youth song, the music says just as much as Ranaldo in its own way, opening with unmoored improvisation and Steve Shelley threatening to reach
King Crimson levels of madness. Then it settles into a punk groove, simulating being on the road, and there’s also a great moment where Moore throws firecrackers into the recording booth and scares the shit out of Ranaldo; the resultant scream feels completely natural to the music, and you can also hear the crackers going off. Next, there’s feedback and amp abuse as the narrator tries to save himself, ending off on a dissonant
Birthday Party-esque jam as his ghost haunts the highway.
“Green Light” is one of several Youth songs that borrows
Neu’s motorik beat, or at least has a suspiciously close approximation. If you’ve not heard any Neu albums, motorik’s a common time beat when you play the kick drum on the downbeats and strike the snare on the offbeats; basically, in theory, the kick carries the rhythm, and the snare plays whatever the kick doesn’t, and that’s what’s happening in this song. It creates a feeling of perpetual motion, like sinking into sand then having the floor pulled out from under your feet as the song veers from the semblance of a hook it established into atonal jamming. There’s a common theory that the song is about
The Great Gatsby’s green light, a symbol of one-sided nostalgia and longing for an equally one-sided love and an unachievable ideal, and it’s definitely one I agree with because it fits the song’s structure well, working towards some obvious goal that only becomes more distant and warped.
“Death to Our Friends” is the only instrumental piece on the album, and it’s probably the most energetic since “In the Kingdom #19”. It’s one of Steve Shelley’s best performances, and it shows why he feels so necessary to the album; he brings a sort of punk energy to the music that makes it feel like it injected some life into the rest of the band, and he can pull off some complex fills when he wants to, but he also knows when to pull back. The same can almost be said for the song; it doesn’t give the listener much room to breathe, but it’s definitely one of the best showcases of Shelley’s percussive talent.
“Secret Girl” is arguably the oddest song in the track listing, with the first minute consisting of strange wooden sounds, like whoever recorded this song is trapped inside a faintly malevolent printing press. This might sound like a truly weird comparison, but it reminds me a lot of the sound collage aspect of early industrial music; it truly sounds more at home in a
Nurse With Wound album than anything Sonic Youth ever made. The rest of the song is a spoken word performance from Kim Gordon over repeating piano passage. While I’m pretty sure the song’s most likely about Gordon’s anxieties about being both a woman in a genre dominated by men and the only woman in a band of men, I suspect some trans women and transfem nonbinary listeners might see the song in a different light. For God’s sake, the song’s called “Secret Girl,” and it has lyrics such as this:
“Close your eyes
Make a wish
Cross yourself
See yourself
Feel yourself
Scream once more”
That being said, it’s far more likely that I’m simply projecting my own experiences on music that has nothing to do with them, so onto the next song.
So, you know how some of the most interesting guitar passages
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds provided came from Blixa Bargeld placing one finger across the entire fretboard and playing, like “Stranger Than Kindness” and that cover of
Leonard Cohen’s “Avalanche”? Yeah, there’s a similar sort of effect happening in “Marilyn Moore,” and the other guitar part also reminds me somewhat of the cacophonous angst of the Birthday Party. Despite all the Nick Cave comparisons, it still feels quintessentially Sonic Youth. There’s also almost a similar contrast to “Starpower” in its delivery; where “Starpower” was about how a woman who knows how to please men sung by a woman, “Marilyn Moore” is a song of distinctly feminine perspective co-written by
Lydia Lunch of
Teenage Jesus and the Jerks that’s sung by a man. Can’t say I’m entirely sure what the song’s about, but as far as I can tell, it might be about a woman with an ambiguous mental illness that might be causing headaches, or vice versa. The accompanying music creates a sort of restless energy that matches the equally fractured and neurotic lyrics quite well, and it makes for one of the one of the most uncomfortable songs the Youth had recorded up to this point, though if you’re interested to hear what might happen if they did this in more direct fashion, check out “Tunic (Song for Karen)” from
Goo.
“Expressway to Yr Skull” is easily the most oblique song on the entire album. I truly have no idea what to make of the song, but its infinitely inferior alternate title, the boring “Madonna, Sean, and Me” might add something. Maybe it’s meant as a deconstruction of Hollywood iconography, as they’ve so often done during the 80s? I don’t know, I got nothing, but this is probably the best song on the record, because it’s the one that feels most like a journey. It’s like a glimpse into another reality where they were a psychedelic rock band, with two minutes of chilling followed by a sudden increase of volume, and the remaining three minutes is ambiance created by feedback, and it’s those last three minutes that captivate me the most. Not just because of the tones they get out of their amps and instruments, but because of how inconspicuously the album ends. It’s just not something I’d seen any other noise rock album do, the way it starts out full of life then swells and just steadily fades away into nothingness, like the song just collapsed on itself somewhere along the way. It’s kind of like walking down familiar streets during the night and suddenly losing all sense of direction and becoming completely lost, which is more or less a summation of my experience with this album, but it feels especially true of its ending.
Though I’m sure fans of their first two albums might vehemently disagree, I find that
EVOL is the album where Sonic Youth truly came into their own as a band. Though it is caught between the experimentalism of their first two LPs and the more straightforward and anthemic songwriting that would define the rest of their existence,
EVOL feels oddly self-assured, perhaps due to the hindsight of the lineup being stable for the remainder of their career ever since Steve Shelley joined.
EVOL has a sort of character which makes it stand out from the rest of the band’s discography; it feels unpredictable due to the weirdness of the second half, and the sudden shifts of volume also create tension, sometimes even more so when they don’t deliver. All of this adds up to arguably the most atmospheric record Sonic Youth had ever made, and for that it’s probably my favourite album of theirs.
Favourite Tracks: "Starpower," "Death to Our Friends," "Expressway to Yr Skull," "Tom Violence," "Shadow of a Doubt"
Least Favourite: "Secret Girl"
