Sonic Youth - Goodbye 20th Century (25th Anniversary) [2xLP]

Release Date: 11/22/2024

25th Anniversary Edition

Originally released 11/16/1999.

SONIC YOUTH Goodbye 20th Century

The fractal rock of Sonic Youth has, needless to say, always been about the challenge of space: the space between notes, the close dissonance of guitar figures that created all new overtones in their proximity. Television’s Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd themselves hinted at such microtonal methodology in their heroic solos that blasted the roles of twin lead electric guitars into poetic, simmering collision wedding chaos and tranquility, masterfully disassembling the primal thud of the rock genre into a nebula of intricate interactions that complemented each others’ paths. At times, for example, Verlaine’s Bollywood guitar jones reared its head and pirouetted around Lloyd’s Keith Richards moves; both played extended solos generating something wholly new and cerebral, yet adding nods to the places from whence they originated.

Sonic Youth in turn also drew on this (especially with Television’s influence) adding their own input: Hendrix, The Beatles, punk trash, and quite prominently the din of Downtown as presented and templated by the avant-garde composers Glenn Branca and Rhys Chatham. These two captured a maximal bent on minimalism by souping up guitar armies to sound like passing subways, then daring to situate themselves in the Classical bin of record stores. For Sonic Youth, the fringe was always the feeding trough from which ideas fed over the course of their story. The brutalist gronk of Confusion Is Sex eventually steered into sublime song- smithery on Evol. They also fed on the spirit of other mavericks of the particular moment, dense prog moves disseminated on Daydream Nation, which chimed in at a time when Hüsker Dü and The Minutemen were also creating daring double albums. As major labeldom eventually gave SY’s sideways rock a spot in mall chain stores next to the grunge peers they informed, they nevertheless pushed themselves further into exploration. With the addition of Jim O’Rourke to their ranks in the late 90’s, their DGC career took a turn into the thicket of exploring denser, long compositions at times evidenced on A Thousand Leaves and New York City Ghosts & Flowers. Concurrently a series of SYR Perspectives Musical self-releases explored not only the combination of improvisation and composition the band had mined as far back as 1986 with their Made In USA soundtrack (and companion Spinhead sessions that were released later), but soaking in O’Rourke’s encyclopedic knowledge of masters of 20th Century classical music he emblemized