A new album, a cult following. Not been seen for years. Sound familiar? The garage door is open wide and the ‘serialists’ push forth. Whilst waiting the necessary time to meet Godot, Allan and Kim, talk shop.
14/06/2002
After 21 years and 15 albums, New York’s perennial uptown hipsters have laid down tracks for a 16th: Murray Street. What follows, gentle reader, is a fictitious account of a real interview with Kim Gordon. Since conversations often reveal more detail and insight than even the best editorial pieces, we though we’d give y’all a treat. Enjoy!
Estragon: “So how did it go?”
Vladimir: “Well, you know how people say that Sonic Youth are too arty or abrasive sounding and it’s all contrived…”
Estragon: “Like people who say they could paint like Jackson Pollack.”
Vladimir: “Yeah, well, I got to ask Kim about whether or not the band considered themselves part of the traditional avant-garde movement’s progression from dadaism and the situationalists and the Fluxus movement and so on. Cuz, like, I’d been reading all this stuff about Jim O’Rourke, who sort of silently joined the band over the last year or two, and how he went to DePaul to study composition, and how he’s played with and produced all these heavy improv guys from, like, Europe and Japan. And then I’d read some other stuff where Thurston was talking about a post-serialist inspired composition on Goodbye 20th Century, or something, and so I asked Kim what the hell post-serialism is. You know, thinking, of course, she’d know. And she says, ‘Do you mean post-surrealism?’ And it was funny because she didn’t laugh, really. She just sat there waiting for the next question. I mean, I guess we chuckled a little bit. But I was surprised, because I’ve always looked at Sonic Youth as, like, your friend’s cool, older brother who goes off to some freaky college like Marlboro or the New School and comes back a Buddhist, smoking clove cigarettes and listening to The Replacements or Can, or something. So I expected her to know. Of course, then I felt like an idiot for asking. I did try a bit of pre-emptory subterfuge by pointing out that there are a ton of graduate-level papers out there dissecting Sonic Youth for one reason or another, so I wouldn’t look stupid; and she did agree that if she were ever a student, she would probably try to write her papers about weird stuff she liked. You know, trying to take something totally unrelated to the topic and tie it to whatever the assignment is (like every college student everywhere).”
Estragon: “So what else d’ya ask her?”
Vladimir: “In the press pack they sent out, there’s all this dense bullshit about how the record is the result of ‘individuals striving in a collectivist environment, for goals that are only understood once they are achieved.’ What kind of crap is that, right? Except, I didn’t say that. I said something more along the lines of, ‘so what does blah, blah, blah mean?’ And she was, like, ‘Oh, that’s our friend Byron Coley. He lives up in Northampton, Mass., by us. He writes all that stuff, it’s all just made-up.’ So that was kind of funny too.”
Estragon: “Where’d you meet her?”
Vladimir: “I met her at their studio on Murray Street, which incidentally is the title of their new album – it’s fucking awesome. I’ve been listening to it, like, twice a day since I got it. It’s kind of post-rocky, but it also has some moments where it sounds like the Meat Puppets and then Sonic Youth covering Pavement covering Sonic Youth. A little Tortoise, too. The Lee Ranaldo number sounds like mid-80s Sonic Youth. And the two Kim songs sound like, well, Kim songs. Though she did say that, actually, the songs are all written collectively.
Apparently, Thurston wrote four or five of them on an acoustic guitar at home and then brought them to the studio for everybody to flesh out. “Now that she and Thurston live up in Massachusetts, she said, they only tour in the summer, when Coco is done with school. Admittedly, it’s not ideal for the band and selling records, but she said it was cool with everybody else. “It was funny. When I asked her about Jim O’Rourke joining the band, you know, she just said, ‘Well, he wouldn’t leave.’ And I sort of teased her a little bit. I asked her if, considering Jim’s substantial resume´, if he wasn’t slumming a bit, joining Sonic Youth. This time she actually smirked; and then I felt like I just insulted the Queen, or something. So, like an idiot, I said, ‘You know I was just joking.’ And she said, ‘You’ll have to ask Jim about that.’ (Next question!)”
Estragon: “So what was the studio like?”
Vladimir: “Ah, it was cool. It’s near where the World Trade Center used to be. It’s a couple of doors down from an Irish bar called the Blarney on one side and this strip club called NY Dolls on the other. So I get there and, Yuko, the make-up artist for the photo shoot that day, was waiting in the lobby. After a couple of minutes of ringing the buzzer, they sent the lift down and we rode up on this tiny elevator to the fourth floor, which opens up on the band’s studio and all these people buzzing around. So right fucking there, in front of me are, like, 10 of their guitars. And they’re all cool old, beat-up guitars, with, like, pieces of tape with markings that say, like, “CF#G CF#G,” and stuff.
“It’s weird, I know Manhattan is expensive, and I guess I’m just naive about the band’s monetary situation, but it wasn’t what I expected. Their rehearsal space was kind of like every other band’s rehearsal space: They each had little homemade sound-baffling partitions made of plywood and stapled with egg-crate foam. And they each had these little areas arrayed with a ton of old pedals, strapped with duct tape and labelled with hand-written pre-sets.
There was an old Fender amp, a Twin, I think. And a Mesa-Boogie, too, maybe. There was an old, grey, Ringo Starr-style Gretsch or Ludwig set over in the corner. It was cool. There was an old Korg synth, too, with colour-coded pieces of purple, orange and green tape on its keys, indicating some arcane pattern for one of their songs.”
Estragon: “That’s cool.”
Vladimir: “Yeah. When I asked Kim what she thought about the new record, she said they all think it’s the best thing they’ve ever done. She joked that, ‘all the other stuff is shit.’
And when I mentioned that I thought the Lee song, “Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style,” sounded like some of their older, more straight-forward noise pop, she told me that these guys, Don Dietrich and Jim Sauer, from Borbetomagus, played saxophones on the song. I never heard of them, but I checked them out and they’re some New York noise outfit from the 80s. From what I could tell, they sound pretty cool. If you like pounding waves of dissonance, that is. Apparently, they have a guitar player too.”
Estragon: “I don’t know, the last few Sonic Youth albums kind of wandered into some ponderously jammy territory.”
Vladimir: “I know. Kim said she thought some people might think it’s because they’re getting older, but she said it’s just what they’re into right now. I believe her, though. They’re a freaking franchise at this point. They can do whatever they want. Not that I think that she looks at it that way, but she did say, and I’ve even seen Lee quoted as saying the same thing, whatever they’re doing at any given time, they’re just doing what interests them.”
Estragon: “I guess. It’s just inaccessible at times.”
Vladimir: “Well, what’s the alternative? Creed?”
Allan Kemler for Crud Magazine© 2002