Album thread: A Thousand Leaves
 

Like I wrote in Goo album thread, I started my Sonic Youth journey from Daydream Nation and Sister followed by Dirty and Goo.

It was summer 1999 when I bought A Thousand Leaves from local Supermarket's bargain bin for 3 euros. At first I didn't really like that album, only couple of songs (Sunday, Hoarfrost and Karen Koltrane) were good or ok. Yet there was something interesting in those songs that kept me listening the album occasionally. Pretty soon I began to like the album as whole and now it's one of my favorite Sonic Youth albums. After buying A Thousand Leaves I really began to explore Sonic Youth's discography and collect their albums. That album made me a SY fan and since I've bought all their new albums as well as the older ones.

Despite hearing the record a number of times, it was one of the last SY records I actually bought when I started getting into them. What sucks is that my copy for whatever reason skips a lot during Snare Girl, which is one of my favorites on the album.

As for the record, I think it has some strong songs on it but most of the Kim songs are a waste with terrible grunting and awful lyrics. I do think this was the turning point for Thurston because he realized Kim had the sassy rockers down already, he decided to start doing more mellow, laid-back vocals which for me was a welcome change.

Pretty good record with some great songs, but I don't think it's their best. Probably top five for me though SY wise.

~Jeremy~

I just get what it means.
This:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnxY7EGfKoQ

thurston rules this shit! perfect noise

ATL is great, but I don't really know if I can think of much to say for it. My brother just gave me the album one day in um, 2002 or somewhere around there. It was a big change for me concerning them because I had been more associated with their more rocked out records like Dirty and Daydream Nation. And this one was largely different from either of those.

It took me a while to really get a feel for the album, I had a hard time remembering the track titles or what they sounded like. But man, that was a fun album to explore. Hits of Sunshine, Wildflower Soul, Hoarfrost, and Heather Angel were my long time favorites for that album.

One of my favorite things about the record to me is that it feels easily the most seasonal of the SY catalog. I mean, when I hear that record I can just see the dead wet leaves falling off the trees and sticking to the damp grass. That album is the personification of Fall to me.

Yes, the album has that feeling. Summer is over and cold breeze welcomes the fall. Noisy part of Karen Koltrane sounds like ice cold rain drops fall in to the ground.

One of my top 5 sy albums. Truely amazing. I like Karen koltrane better than Karen revisited. Oh! Probably lees best album(songwriting-wise)

this album puts your head in the sky. as psychédélic as "their satanic majesties request" by the stones or sgt pepper's by the beatles

a Thousand leaves is definetely one of the greatest Sonic albums! I´m not sure, but I think album came to Europe much more later than it was realised in Us. I remembered, that when it came, it was autumn in Finland. Maybe I remembered wrong. Somehow the album has always been connected in autumn in my mind (the name thousand leaves reminds me also autumn and the music is also to me kind of autumn music). I love autumn, so maybe that´s the one reason why I love this album so much! I have waited every new Sonic Youth album impatiently since Experimental Jet set and only Experimental and NYC ghost have been little disappointment at first to me. So when I got ATL, I listened it many many times and enjoyed a lot!!!

One funny remembering came to my mind. When I bought ATL, my retailer at that time said, that Sonic Youth had started to make albums that are not good at all. He mentioned some Thurston solo album, where is only Visa-card using! (Does this album really exists?). He also mentioned SYR serie and said that it was all rubbish. And I believed him!!! Well, I was not a great fan of Master-dik that time so maybe SYRs could have been too "arty" that time. On the other hand ATL is also kind of arty album, so I think now I had liked at least SYR 1 and 2. And there isn´t such favourite songs in ATL, I love them all!!!

One of my top 5 SY albums as well. Hits of Sunshine is one of my favorite SY songs. Simply one of the best atmospheres of any album ever made. Also, the best album cover!

This was the first album that I bought after having discovered the band quite late, in 1998. Sunday, Wildflower Soul, Hits of Sunshine, Snare, girl ,Female Mechanic on duty, stand out as the best to me.

Murray St. > ATL

ATL feat. Sunday was released in the fall of 97 on the movie sndtrk for SubUrbia. Then in the spring, Geffen and SYR released the album version along with Contre le Sexism and then, you know, the whole decline and fall of western civilization writ sonic followed. I mean, remember The Diamond Sea? SYR 1? These are top 5 cuts. But ATL is still up there. Spooky.

Through the miracle that is YouTube, I heard most of this album (some songs weren't uploaded; I had to settle for a sample of Contre Le Sexisme from All Music Guide, a slightly truncated Hits of Sunshine cut down to 10 minutes, and a bootleg of Karen Koltrane) for the first time today. For some reason, both A Thousand Leaves and NYC Ghosts and Flowers managed to elude me in my "I must have every Sonic Youth album I can get my hands on" days in 2002-2004. All I can say is...

I need to hear it again.

Not so much because I thought it was completely mindblowing and must indulge myself in its audio bliss over and over, but more it's the first Sonic Youth album that I've been fairly ambivalent over whether I really liked it or not after the first listen. I mean, it's got some great atmospherics and some good songs, yet it kinda seems to drag at more than one point, Kim's vocals are a bit hard to take sometimes (and this is coming from someone who likes Panty Lies), and there's WAY too much use of phasing effects. It's like they felt the archetypical guitar sound for the album should be a cleanly phased Jazzmaster.

All that listed (ha), did the beginning verse of Heather Angel remind anyone else of Pink Floyd's Hey You?

My favorite album by anyone, ever.

Robert Christgau considers it their best and actually gave it an A+!!!

One contentious opinion about an album I love as well: the middle section of Hits of Sunshine is boring as fuck. There. I said it.

I hired my local Library's copy of the album years ago and can vaguely remember liking it. I got the feeling that the band moved away from their inner city influenced sound onto a more domestic, familial influenced sound, if you know what I mean. It was kinda maternal.

That's what makes sonic youth awesome, though...taking chances and moving on to new horizons.

My fav. album ever.

I don´t agree. There are lots of long songs in pop music history, that are not interesting all the time (for example Canned Heat: Refried Boogie part 2), but in my opinion Sonic Youth hasn´t made any long song that is not interesting all the time. And Hits of Sunshine is pure magic all the time!

Sweet. Then crank it up. I envy you. As for me, I'll give the jam section about a minute, then skip to the next track. Trust me, I wish I could love it, but I don't.

this album is simply beautiful. it is like a landscape painting or a romanesque palace or cathedral, elegant, choreographed without sounding too contrives, artistic, visual, creative, and of course we discussed all this on the Alice and Wonderland thread, as this album is definitaly an almost mystical journey into Sonic Youth. Every piece is so fluidly dynamic and intergrally interconnected with the preceding and following pieces of music, it is in a word, a divinely perfect album. It was my first sonic album, I picked it up the day it came out, it was gorgeous then, and as I have lived such a life in the past 12 years, it is even more gorgeous now...

hands down the greatest sonic youth album, a style and era which neither could not nor shouldn't be duplicated, but rather sincerely enjoyed entirely on its own for its own sake..