Death of a Rock Cliche
Reviewed:
“Rather Ripped” by Sonic Youth (Geffen)
“The Obliterati” by Mission of Burma (Matador)
Since at least as far back as John Keats, who had produced his odes for the ages by the time tuberculosis took him at 22, it has been tempting to find a special kind of genius and energy in works by artists who died in their twenties. In such cases, a brief life suggests a life more fully lived and realized in art, not one cut short of its potential. Furthermore, an early demise freeze-frames the artist at their apex, when the qualities we tend to link to youth are presumably most alive—originality, radicalism, idealism—preventing the decline into conservativism to which longer-lived artists may succumb. Nowhere does this ideal of burnt out youth more persist in overshadowing the faded glory of experience than in rock music. The myth serves well an industry whose target market is the young—an unfortunate fact for serious music lovers, given that the industry tends to equate youth with superficiality, empty novelty, self-absorption, formula, materialism, and over-production (at least if its product is any indication). And while of course it’s easy enough to find much fine independently made music, this affords no protection from the radios, TVs, pop-up windows, and magazine covers that constantly intrude unwanted sensations upon our daily lives.
Fortunately, several releases this summer suggest that the myth connecting rock and youth may itself be past its prime. Even without considering Johnny Cash’s American V and Bob Dylan’s Modern Times (both extraordinary), the two new albums by Sonic Youth and Mission of Burma—indie rock veterans with well over two decades of experience each—would be more than enough to deal a mortal blow to such a cliché.
Hailed as their most accessible record to date, “Rather Ripped” finds Sonic Youth embracing as much as transcending a pop sensibility (yes, perhaps the very same sensibility I deride above). “What a Waste” suggests filth can liberate, as Kim Gordon demands, “Hey gimme hollow stimulation / It’s so sleazy to be free”—a demand that would fall as pure irony if not for the unstoppable beat and ebullient guitar melody carrying it. Explosive loves and open roads pervade the album, which is propelled by bursts of guitar noise and drone that transform the lyrics’ occasional menace and melancholy into something faceable if not downright enjoyable. On “Incinerate,” Thurston Moore proclaims a love that is violent, inspiring, and perhaps even inspired by violence, although softened by a humor that appears frequently: “You wave your torch into my eyes / Flamethrower lover burning mind.” With equal neo-Beat earnestness he asks in a later song, “Do you believe in rapture babe?,” evoking both ecstasy and fundamentalist notions of apocalypse over a slow two chord riff that is sweet, simple, but a touch strange. Perhaps “Jams Run Free,” however, best sums up the album’s ability to reflect and embrace musically the infinite movement of life, transforming looming threats into sources of something other than hopelessness: “I love the way you move / I hope it’s not too late / For me / Its too good / On this sea / Where the light / Is green.”
Movement indeed defines “Rather Ripped,” and it is the music not the words that most powerfully communicates it. The songs here are clipped much shorter than usual, but nothing fans have grown to love is lost. The dissonance of screwdrivers raked across fretboards, the long driving riffs, the anthemic buildups, the weird tunings, the trippy jams—they are all here, but expertly compressed into three to five minute gems that achieve as much intensity as the ten minute sprawling soundscapes of previous albums. Drawing from across the wide-range of a musical vocabulary developed since the early 80s, “Rather Ripped” feels like the culmination of Sonic Youth’s long, steady, and prolific career. Not only have they sustained as a respectable rock band despite entering their 50s, they have continued genuinely to evolve.
As have Mission of Burma, another avant-garde band with pop inclinations and a tremendous influence on indie rock that began putting out records in the early 80s. Unlike Sonic Youth, however, Burma broke up in 1983 after only one full-length album, an EP, and a couple of singles. “The Obliterati,” their latest album, and their second since reforming in 2002, proves that their agro-artsy post-punk abilities anything but atrophied during their long hiatus. The opening track “2wice”explodes into life with the hammered drumming of Peter Prescott, quickly joined by Roger Miller’s jagged guitars under Clint Conley’s sneering, “Take a look inside / what did you think you’d find?” As with “Rather Ripped,” everything Burma fans have grown to love is here: the shimmering walls of sound, the angular post-punk guitars, the anthems, the complex and abrupt changes, the pounding rhythm section, the tape loops. Somehow, though, “The Obliterati” brings all of these elements to a pitch of intensity greater than on any of their previous albums. In terms of sheer force, the chugging guitar and bass charge on tracks like “Spider’s Web” puts all the newest hard-rock, punk, metal, industrial, post-punk, and emo to utter and unredeemable shame.
Like the music, the lyrics return to the themes of their first releases, namely the alienation and disillusionment of early “hits”(I use this word in its most relative sense) like “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver.” But how can men far into middle age return to the angst of youth with any sincerity? Easily enough, given the many disenchantments that accompany age, a return to the music industry, and the state of contemporary politics. A sense of personal dissolution haunts many tracks, though they are often charged with a manic humor and a sometimes self-flagellating demand for action. On “2wice,” for instance, after begging the listener not to “make the same mistake twice” in a world of “Jet planes that fall out of black skies / and vanish without trace,” Conley confesses, “the heart grows tired. / The mind is weak . . . We're damaged without trace. / You've got me dead to rights / I'm a liar.” The last two lines become a doomed refrain until a slight qualification at the end offers a brief gesture toward hope: “You’ve got me dead to certain rights,” sings Conley. If the album’s title refers to a destructively oblivious elite (or middle-class), its many anthemic calls to consciousness and action are intensely skeptical, self-aware, hard-earned, and real. In a time when most pop music is empty of politics and wisdom, “The Obliterati” offers plenty of both, while proving that the benefits of thought and experience are far from incompatible with the explosive urgency of rock.
“Rather Ripped” by Sonic Youth (Geffen)
“The Obliterati” by Mission of Burma (Matador)
Since at least as far back as John Keats, who had produced his odes for the ages by the time tuberculosis took him at 22, it has been tempting to find a special kind of genius and energy in works by artists who died in their twenties. In such cases, a brief life suggests a life more fully lived and realized in art, not one cut short of its potential. Furthermore, an early demise freeze-frames the artist at their apex, when the qualities we tend to link to youth are presumably most alive—originality, radicalism, idealism—preventing the decline into conservativism to which longer-lived artists may succumb. Nowhere does this ideal of burnt out youth more persist in overshadowing the faded glory of experience than in rock music. The myth serves well an industry whose target market is the young—an unfortunate fact for serious music lovers, given that the industry tends to equate youth with superficiality, empty novelty, self-absorption, formula, materialism, and over-production (at least if its product is any indication). And while of course it’s easy enough to find much fine independently made music, this affords no protection from the radios, TVs, pop-up windows, and magazine covers that constantly intrude unwanted sensations upon our daily lives.
Fortunately, several releases this summer suggest that the myth connecting rock and youth may itself be past its prime. Even without considering Johnny Cash’s American V and Bob Dylan’s Modern Times (both extraordinary), the two new albums by Sonic Youth and Mission of Burma—indie rock veterans with well over two decades of experience each—would be more than enough to deal a mortal blow to such a cliché.
Hailed as their most accessible record to date, “Rather Ripped” finds Sonic Youth embracing as much as transcending a pop sensibility (yes, perhaps the very same sensibility I deride above). “What a Waste” suggests filth can liberate, as Kim Gordon demands, “Hey gimme hollow stimulation / It’s so sleazy to be free”—a demand that would fall as pure irony if not for the unstoppable beat and ebullient guitar melody carrying it. Explosive loves and open roads pervade the album, which is propelled by bursts of guitar noise and drone that transform the lyrics’ occasional menace and melancholy into something faceable if not downright enjoyable. On “Incinerate,” Thurston Moore proclaims a love that is violent, inspiring, and perhaps even inspired by violence, although softened by a humor that appears frequently: “You wave your torch into my eyes / Flamethrower lover burning mind.” With equal neo-Beat earnestness he asks in a later song, “Do you believe in rapture babe?,” evoking both ecstasy and fundamentalist notions of apocalypse over a slow two chord riff that is sweet, simple, but a touch strange. Perhaps “Jams Run Free,” however, best sums up the album’s ability to reflect and embrace musically the infinite movement of life, transforming looming threats into sources of something other than hopelessness: “I love the way you move / I hope it’s not too late / For me / Its too good / On this sea / Where the light / Is green.”
Movement indeed defines “Rather Ripped,” and it is the music not the words that most powerfully communicates it. The songs here are clipped much shorter than usual, but nothing fans have grown to love is lost. The dissonance of screwdrivers raked across fretboards, the long driving riffs, the anthemic buildups, the weird tunings, the trippy jams—they are all here, but expertly compressed into three to five minute gems that achieve as much intensity as the ten minute sprawling soundscapes of previous albums. Drawing from across the wide-range of a musical vocabulary developed since the early 80s, “Rather Ripped” feels like the culmination of Sonic Youth’s long, steady, and prolific career. Not only have they sustained as a respectable rock band despite entering their 50s, they have continued genuinely to evolve.
As have Mission of Burma, another avant-garde band with pop inclinations and a tremendous influence on indie rock that began putting out records in the early 80s. Unlike Sonic Youth, however, Burma broke up in 1983 after only one full-length album, an EP, and a couple of singles. “The Obliterati,” their latest album, and their second since reforming in 2002, proves that their agro-artsy post-punk abilities anything but atrophied during their long hiatus. The opening track “2wice”explodes into life with the hammered drumming of Peter Prescott, quickly joined by Roger Miller’s jagged guitars under Clint Conley’s sneering, “Take a look inside / what did you think you’d find?” As with “Rather Ripped,” everything Burma fans have grown to love is here: the shimmering walls of sound, the angular post-punk guitars, the anthems, the complex and abrupt changes, the pounding rhythm section, the tape loops. Somehow, though, “The Obliterati” brings all of these elements to a pitch of intensity greater than on any of their previous albums. In terms of sheer force, the chugging guitar and bass charge on tracks like “Spider’s Web” puts all the newest hard-rock, punk, metal, industrial, post-punk, and emo to utter and unredeemable shame.
Like the music, the lyrics return to the themes of their first releases, namely the alienation and disillusionment of early “hits”(I use this word in its most relative sense) like “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver.” But how can men far into middle age return to the angst of youth with any sincerity? Easily enough, given the many disenchantments that accompany age, a return to the music industry, and the state of contemporary politics. A sense of personal dissolution haunts many tracks, though they are often charged with a manic humor and a sometimes self-flagellating demand for action. On “2wice,” for instance, after begging the listener not to “make the same mistake twice” in a world of “Jet planes that fall out of black skies / and vanish without trace,” Conley confesses, “the heart grows tired. / The mind is weak . . . We're damaged without trace. / You've got me dead to rights / I'm a liar.” The last two lines become a doomed refrain until a slight qualification at the end offers a brief gesture toward hope: “You’ve got me dead to certain rights,” sings Conley. If the album’s title refers to a destructively oblivious elite (or middle-class), its many anthemic calls to consciousness and action are intensely skeptical, self-aware, hard-earned, and real. In a time when most pop music is empty of politics and wisdom, “The Obliterati” offers plenty of both, while proving that the benefits of thought and experience are far from incompatible with the explosive urgency of rock.
posted by R at 5:03 PM
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