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ACL’s Most Anticipated: #10- Sonic Youth
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Photo courtesy of Stevenfriedrich.com
The band that combined rock guitars and screwdrivers-and turned it into a legacy
In 1981, the year that an up and coming band called the Arcadians changed their name to reflect a new direction in their sound, Ronald Reagan was president, Ric Flair was your WWF Wrestlemania champion (it wasn’t the WWE back then) and the best selling musical act in the country was REO Speedwagon.
As Bob Dylan would say, “Oh the times, they are a-changin’.”
Twenty-eight years later, the Arcadians are better known as Sonic Youth, one of the most successful bands to evolve out of the 80’s alternative rock scene. The term is tossed around rather loosely these days, but back then alternative music didn’t really denote anything having to do with popular radio. To be an alternative rocker in 1981, your music had to push beyond the boundaries of the mainstream. It started with punk rock, the original alternative rock, and spawned several subgenres. The interesting thing about Sonic Youth is that they didn’t really fit neatly into any of them. They weren’t punk; though they credit Black Flag and Minor Threat as major influences, they didn’t match the speed and intensity of the more hardcore punk acts of their time. Much like their predecessors, the Velvet Underground, they pushed for an experimental sound, but theirs was more avant-garde, a little more John Cage in them (and if you don’t know who he was, click here to read up on him, and here to listen to one of his...well we'll say “interesting” musical ideas).
Sonic Youth took the traditional elements of rock music- and threw them out the window. No catchy lyrics to be found; they preferred a more loose style of songwriting. Looking for hummable melodies? You won’t find those here either; they championed a free-form sound that borrowed elements of groups such as the aforementioned Velvet Underground, as well as the Stooges. Then they did something entirely new; they purposely altered their instruments. They de-tuned strings and tooled around with their guitars; the reason is that at the time, they couldn’t afford better ones, so the idea was to try to improve their own instead. As a result, the timbre changed entirely, morphed into a sort of dark, dissonant drone that came to define their sound. In fact, it was the reason for the name change- as the Arcadians began to explore this new style of “noise rock,” lead singer Thurston Moore wanted a name that reflected the new direction their music was taking.
In later years, their music began to take on a more structured, compositional feel, though they retained the elements of dissonance and atonality that became a staple of their sound. Their early work, by diehard fan’s standards, is considered somewhat developmental- a band with an idea of how to craft their own sound, but still trying to put the pieces together. By the time they released 1986’s EVOL, they hit their stride, moving past experimentalism for the sake of being experimental and taking on a more straightforward approach to crafting albums. Two decades later, they are now lauded in the indie circuit as pioneers of avant-garde rock.
It’s pretty amazing that this is their first trip to the Austin City Limits Music Festival; Austin is about as alternative a city as it gets. Nevertheless, for those of you with a taste for underground rock, check out Sonic Youth for a sampling of how it all got started.
Sonic Youth
Date- Sunday October 4
Time- 7:00 pm
Stage- Dell
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