bettin on the POLL in the heather: Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star

i know we had talked about doing this before...

"Androgynous Mind," but I could have voted for any of the first six.

i don't really care so much for Screaming Skull (Thurston beating Kerr to the punch on SST nostalgia by about 16 years lol) or Self Obssessed and Sexxee too much actually...the first three songs are amongst the best, but I obv voted for the last one...

"Tokyo Eye" is my jam, love the whole weird sound and structure of it.

the spastic, intermittent guitar interplay on "androgynous mind" is my favourite sonic youth moment ever

this album is da best, strays furthest from the mean than any other (good) sonic youth album and yet so comfortable and perfect. i wish they would have returned there again at some point.

this is my favorite sonic youth album, but i'm not much of a fan. i played this tape a lot in my car in high school, but only the left channel worked in my car's stereo, so it's always weird to hear it now with both channels. i'm leaning towards starfield road.

Tokyo Eye! *tssh*

anyone know what that sound is? sounds like the cymbal on a musical kid's toy or something.

always assumed it was a cymbal from some cheap keyboard

Went with "Tokyo Eye".

When I saw the Boredoms round about the time this album came out, Yamatsuka Eye was bashing the shit out of a little kids' half-sized drum kit that was set up right in front of the stage. That's what the sound has always reminded me of.

god this album ssssssssssssssssssuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkksssssssss

total auto-pilot mode. voted bull in the heather over winner's blues.

this is between Bone, Tokyo Eye and In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader for me.

Voted "Starfield Road" mostly based on the awesome Thurston solo rendition I saw him do as the encore for Free Kitten.

xp shasta - rilly? i find this the least auto-pilot, or least jam band at least, sonic youth album of all the ones i've heard. it's like on other albums they were like "ok so let's just play this riff and slowly decompose into textural noise" and ejstans is like here they're like "ok let's write a bridge."

this album seems the most like a contract fulfiller of all the 90s ones (that i heard). i pretty much gave up on them after this (although I eventually warmed up to Washing Machine, but they lost me for good after that, at least as a consumer of their records).

xxxxp I tend not to give Waist and Bourgeois Reader enough credit...those are a couple of really great rockers.

yeah "auto-pilot" to me conjures up some band going through the motions and making something that sounds superficially like their old records -- this album deconstructs and/or abandons what they'd done previously more than any other SY record. in some ways it feels tossed-off or lightweight, but imo it seems like a deliberate choice after a series of albums that were increasingly labored over, expensive, and reportedly stressful to make.

i agree completely with you some dude but i do think it is a bit lightweight at the same time...also, it tends to lack dynamics which makes it easy to overlook songs such as Waist and ITMOTBR...also Skink, Bone, and Quest for the Cup tend to blur together...and Screaming Skull, Self Obsessed, and Androgynous Mind (though samosa is atleast partially otm about that song)...

voted sweet shine. probably my favorite kim vocal.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

their worst record imo. would have made a deece EP with a couple mediocre b-sides and then jettisoned all the garbajjj.

i mostly like the records they made after this that you said upthread you haven't bothered with, but trust me, they made worse (and this is still maybe my 4th favorite of the albums they'd made up to that point).

WOO
I'M CUMIN HOOOOOOME

I just sold my vinyl of this record for like... 12 bucks. I was desperate for cash! But i listened to it before I sold it and it is so good. I never cared much for Tokyo Eye when I was first into them, but it sounds amazing to me now. This poll was right on the money.

yeah "auto-pilot" to me conjures up some band going through the motions and making something that sounds superficially like their old records -- this album deconstructs and/or abandons what they'd done previously more than any other SY record. in some ways it feels tossed-off or lightweight, but imo it seems like a deliberate choice after a series of albums that were increasingly labored over, expensive, and reportedly stressful to make.

― the ship!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (some dude), Tuesday, April 13, 2010 10:23 AM (2 years ago)

otm. it took me a while to warm to this album, but it eventually became one of my favorites, and the title suits it very well. playful, varied, engaged with pop, appealingly casual, and experimental in the best possible (least self-important) way.

Love this album so much. "Sweet Shine" all the way (all the way).

I pretty much hate this album and am baffled by the love some people have for it. I just think it sounds like badly done 90s alt-rock.

I did listen to it along with all the others at the time though. Maybe I should give it more of a chance, I dunno.

this is such a strange disconcerting album. there's a real undercurrent of aggression. throwing out a lot of the growth since their initial noise stuff and then saying "what if we grew a different way" and maybe anticipating a whole other current of mid-late 90s noise?

i guess i could see how that deliberate obnoxious refusal to be harmonic even in a typical SY way could feel tossed off at the time.

still feels tossed off to me, sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. strangest thing about it is the deliberate, thicket-clearing removal of not just the fuzz-heavy sonic density (their calling card since daydream nation), but also the abstract drug blear that had pretty much always been there. result sounds like a sketch-level architectural model of a possible sonic youth album, made of tongue depressors and styrofoam, displayed under unforgiving flourescence. no surprise that the follow-up retreated so decisively into familiar patterns & sounds.

"All your dreams will come true. All my dreams came true. But.. now.. I have a bunch of other dreams."

I need to listen to this again. I think I've only listened to it once. The lead single, "bull in the heather" irritated me so I gave album a miss when it came out

this is maybe my 5th favorite SY album, meaning I LOVE IT, never understood the critical drubbing

if u don't think it was an improvement over Dirty, you got problems

That's absolutely bananas

rip van otm (though I did not always agree)

dirty is the best you are the worst

WM is my favorite but I mostly agree with this: http://www.stereogum.com/1144241/sonic-youth-albums-from-worst-to-best/top-stories/lead-story/

Sonic Youth has its share of fiercely loyal and extremely defensive fans, and rightfully so. But many of these same fans dramatically underrate the band’s middle-late period in favor of nostalgic favorites like Dirty and Goo, despite the late Geffen years producing some of the band’s most idiosyncratic and satisfying music.

I feel like this is the big step sideways that makes all their later hippie albums possible. A lot of Murray Street sounds like Jet Set songs stretched out to Live Dead lengths. (Someone else mentioned the similarity between Self Obssessed & Sexxee and Disco Notice, but to these ears Sympathy for the Strawberry is a lot like Bone at 300%)

Also j. otm. Sorry rvw

'Sweet Shine' is probably up there with the best Cocteau Twins songs which resonate profoundly in my soul even while I readily admit that I have no clue what the singer is going on about.

"Sweet Shine" IS good. One of maybe 4 tracks in the "reasons to keep this CD" column back when I sold it within months of release.

sounds like a sketch-level architectural model of a possible sonic youth album, made of tongue depressors and styrofoam, displayed under unforgiving flourescence.

OTM!

listening to this for the first time in a long time thanks to this thread. surprised skink got no votes, that's a primo kim song. self-obsessed and sexxee is pretty bad

SY’s “New Jersey.” lol

That makes a certain kind of sense.

my least fave of their '90s run easily

still really great

It's all about Kim's songs imo. Like it was just an EP of the tracks with her vocals it'd be pretty much their best album (if not exactly representative of their sound in general).

Whoever does the little 'all your dreams will come true' bit from 'Quest for the Cup' sounds eerily like my gf at the time the album was released. It kinda blew my mind when I first heard it. So I probably have an irrational emotional attachment to that one. But I'd still rep for the rest.

kim totally carries this album you're right

The band supposedly joked that they'd recorded over the masters for "Sister" to save tape costs -- which sounds silly at first, until you really, really crank "Jet Set" up... you can actually hear "Sister" played in its entirety underneath the album!

Am I being trolled? I'm being trolled.

(from: http://www.sonicyouth.com/mustang/lp/lp10.html)

If you turn it up even louder you can still hear the remnants of Sonic Death under the traces of Sister. They were nothing if not thrifty.

Yep, this is totally what comes to mind as "the Kim record". Love it so much, it was the first contemporary new SY record after I got into them. Heady days getting this album and then all those DGC reissues not too long after, for the latecomers like myself.

Brb, will experiment and report.

xp

P.S. Am I trolling you? I might be trolling you. I think you just got punked, pomenitul.

Nonsense, I can *totally* hear it now. And you can't – ha ha ha!

this has never been one of my faves but i'm listening to it now and enjoying it. i do think the kim songs are better but the thurston songs aren't bad. mostly it feels like thurston is trying to do something different (more stripped-down/"rock"?) while everyone else is like "OK thurston whatever" and doing standard (good) sonic youth songs. though "bull in the heather" does fit in with the more stripped-down/"rock" aesthetic of "screaming skull"/"self-obsessed and sexxee"/"androgynous mind"

this was marketed like their lo-fi/DIY album IIRC?

According to that Sonic Youth website, "Skink" was originally known under the title "Pete Townshend". I guess the opening riff sounds a little like a minor key variation on "Amazing Journey"?

Sweet Shine is maybe top 10 of the tracks I really wish Spotify had a "radio edit" of (or a feature to add a fade to a track in your playlist) and probably at some point i will upload an edited mp3 so I can add this to a playlist of sullen/moody 90s rock i'm making this week.

i guess if the album were more popular then a double disc reissue would have come out moving the hidden track to a separate index, but probably there weren't enough b-sides/compilation tracks/demos, as the whole album sounds like demos anyway (which suits it).

I like all of their studio albums to at least some degree but this and The Eternal are the two I like least.

Which do you like best?

I probably put on Sister most often?

My man.

I love this album. Who will join me?

Re-listening now. I bought it when it was new and liked it, but I may have overrated it after my fire-of-a-thousand-suns hatred of Dirty. "Winner's Blues" is a terrible album opener, that's for sure.

I like what I’ve heard of this album a lot more than dirty or washing machine

Yeah, after listening to it in full for the first time in quite a few years, this is easily the best 1990s SY album.

"Winner's Blues" is a terrible album opener, that's for sure.

dude, WHAT

When I haven’t heard it for a while I forget about this album and that I dig it

dude, WHAT

Never open your album with a slow boring song. They should have opened with "Bull in the Heather" and stuck "Winner's Blues" at the end of Side One, right in between "Self-Obsessed and Sexxee" and "Bone."

In its way it’s the most easily digestible album of theirs that decade, certainly

Too much Kim on this one. If I had to choose I’d go with screaming skull or sweet shine

I remember using an acoustic guitar was a huge deal at the time

I think it's a terrific opening track choice

No Lee song!

^ yeah why

Is this the album where he got pissed and almost quit for that reason(?)

Maybe he didn’t like being the “trash” member of the band. Or was that Thurston

Trash, won't pick it up, take them lights away...

this album came out at the tail end of three insane months. it's absolutely wild that crooked rain X2 was released on valentine's day 1994, kurt cobain goes the hemingway three weeks later, and then the next month after that, pavement's canonicity was already so in process that it turns out kim based SY's biggest "hit" (?) on bob nastanovich's horse-betting antics ("betting on the bull in the heather") (. . . this last bit at least according to thurston's recent memoir)

i think of this album (and the next two, really) as partof a transitional work for them and the start of the calmer, jammier, possibly even better nu-youth that would finally materialize on murray street (an obvious crowd fav) and beyond.

def a solid sy 90s alb tho. works really well as a full listen. otherwise, i like "sweet shine." (+"bull in the heather" but like, duh)

This one + Psychic Hearts (in ’95) are peak SY for me. Didn’t Butch Vig say the band was going for more of an “indie rock” approach? They got me!

This record seems to be a somewhat forced attempt at leaving the commercially acceptable Alternative sound of the previous record, but a lot of it comes across as crabby; as if they know what their new audience wants, but it's enough just to deny them without putting something substantially new in the place of the rejected musical directions. They'd start to grow naturally on the subsequent records.

lol, I almost posted verbatim several things about this album that I'd already posted upthread. Good to see that some things never change.

But I will reiterate that it's all about the Kim songs. Luv.

Easily the best Sonic Youth show I ever saw was on the Washing Machine tour where they were still playing songs from this album - in my case Bull in the Heather, Skink and Starfield Road - they were so good that night, the sound was beautiful and clear and I felt like that was what I always hoped a SY live show would sound like

(I also saw them twice on the Dirty Tour - good but not great? - and once when they played Daydream Nation in full which was a pretty boring experience for them and me I reckon)

The terseness and precision of the tracks sound like a Stevensian farewell to an idea: in many ways the most severe SY listen of the early '90s.

Imo this was the big conceptual reset a la Young Americans that made their more conventionally jammy later mode. I feel like a lot of the stuff on MS for example are like what would happen if you took EJSTNS songs & blew them up to about 300% their og length/scope

(*its a bit of erm a stretch but I do think, say Tokyo Eye does kinda map onto Rain on Tin. Same wrt Skink & Sympathy for the Strawberry etc)

(Bone maps out onto SftS, not Skink, duh)

Always have a soft spot for this one, as it was the first "new" SY album I was able to pick-up on release. Obviously I was late to the game already at that point but, hey, I was not yet 18 when it was released and had been in a cultural wasteland before I got away to college. I just thought they were the closest band ever and it was a good time to get really into them - shortly after this came out you had the DGC reissues getting the back catalog in shops, the Made in USA soundtrack, the Confusion is Next book and then Washing Machine hit which, at the time, was my favorite album ever (I even had the blue Washing Machine t-shirt from the cover!).

Never open your album with a slow boring song. They should have ...

i agree with morrisp (it's a perfect opening tune for this album)

Is this the album where he got pissed and almost quit for that reason(?)

no that was Dirty, over "Genetic" being left off the album proper

this has always been my least favourite SY album

I think this is the sy album I've been playing the most often in the last couple of years.

The second SY album I bought upon release (the first was Dirty). In the interim I’d been coping whatever earlier reissues DGC was producing, on tape, because this was when you could still do that

This was the second sonic youth album I bought (after Dirty, though both were bought in 1996 or 1997). I didn't seek it out, I think I just happened to find it used relatively cheap. I remember being a bit disappointed by it compared to Dirty, though I still listened to it a lot since I only had probably between 30 and 40 cds back then. Sonic Youth didn't become a favorite band until I heard "A Thousand Leaves", after which I went back and bought all previous albums.

Slowly over time though, this album has gone up in my estimation, it would probably be a top 5 SY album for me now.