Sonic Youth-Sister (1987)

Sonic Youth-Sister (1987)

"Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable."

William Pollard

By: Ghost Writer

It takes only a couple of seconds into this album first song, Catholic Block to understand that 1987's Sonic Youth's Sister record is quite a different beast, although jagged and abstract the Youths are better at writing out of this Earth guitar lines as their songs have acquired an intense propulsive beat behind them, but no matter how dynamic the opener can be, Beauty Lies in the Eye goes way back to the previous EVOL record tactics, with its dreamy and droney almost Velvet Underground type of slow song, featuring the ethereal voice of Kim Gordon and the welcomed intense drumming of Steve Shelley.

Hot Wire My Heart is a powerful proto punk number that reminds me a lot of the mighty New York Dolls and Johnny Thunders stiletto guitars, followed by the out of this world guitars of Kotton Krown and the development of the two vocals approach and again the Velvets like dirge type of song.

On Pacific Coast Highway, Shelley demonstrates his weighty presence in the band by adding some hot tribal drumming, in the Moe Tucker New York school of drummers, interwoven with an extraordinary loud quiet dynamic, a modus operandi that most of the next decade "alternative" (always hated the term) acts will adopt again and again, but the band's imagination goes really wild on Ranaldo's amazing Pipeline/Kill Time, with completely weird sonic directions that up to this day remain fascinating, What a great way of  changing music history forever!

Schizophrenia has a certain Joy Division thing to it, is certain a great song and is one of the foundations of noise and pop that the band will revisit many times in the future and one that would became one of the pillars of again (shitty) “alternative rock”, but sounding really fresh here, just before the violent guitar slashing and brutal tom tom drumming in Stereo Sanctity, a song that goes back to the wild sonic years of the Velvet Underground, but is given here a complete new spin to meet the post no wave era.

Noise Pop is clearly born on Tuff Gnarl a beautiful song with an almost ineligible melody savaged between sharp as a knife metallic guitars and red hot drums in what seems to be a merciless New York art rock brutish sonic attack, preparing us for the incredible aural discharge named White Kross that perfectly closes a perfect arty record that defiantly changes within less than an hour all the preconceptions of rock music, Sister could be the place where it all started for bands like Nirvana, sadly, many may still think that Nevermind was the revolution, for those, we gladly recommend to listen to early Sonic Youth, Husker Du and Dinousar Jr to learn where it all started.