[EVOLghost]

All the SY albums are rad....except for Dirty and RR.....RR's songs are meehhhhhh save a few...and Dirty just sounds weird...not the songs, everything else....

[Genteel Death]

If you consider Sonic Nurse to be their best record God knows which one is their worst for you.

[woofwoof]

Originally Posted by Genteel Death

If you consider Sonic Nurse to be their best record God knows which one is their worst for you.

Whatever bro, I have T on my side on this one! For the record, my least fav. is probably Experimental

Originally Posted by EVOLghost

All the SY albums are rad....except for Dirty and RR.....RR's songs are meehhhhhh save a few...and Dirty just sounds weird...not the songs, everything else....

I've been listening to RR recently..some really cool moments wrapped in some great but mostly decent songs (by SY standards). The middle of Turquoise Boy, for instance, where it goes from gentle harmonics to rocking out to total Bad Moon-esque doom and gloom in the space of a minute or so...so fucking awesome. And of course tracks like Pink Steam and Incinerate are great, too.

[EVOLghost]

Originally Posted by woofwoof

Whatever bro, I have T on my side on this one! For the record, my least fav. is probably Experimental


I've been listening to RR recently..some really cool moments wrapped in some great but mostly decent songs (by SY standards). The middle of Turquoise Boy, for instance, where it goes from gentle harmonics to rocking out to total Bad Moon-esque doom and gloom in the space of a minute or so...so fucking awesome. And of course tracks like Pink Steam and Incinerate are great, too.

RR is OK....just not as rad as every other album...

[EVOLghost]

I think I need to listen to RR again...


the Neutral...and Jams run free are also great songs..(besides the obvious Reena n Pink steam)

[EVOLghost]

Are saying evol is a bad album?

I hope you get kicked in the nuts.

[evollove]

Yeah, they totally sold out to the mainstream on EVOL.

[doktormutt]

you are not alone. it seems though many SY funs really dislike the melodic songs. this album dawned on me some years ago. I used to try to share that thrill with friends but realised it's hard to find someone with the same mood at the same time, particulary when the matter is SY. It was a quite lonely thrill then.
by that time I thought it was the best album ever but funny is that I've had this same feeling about other SY albuns in different life moments - man! this is the best album I could ever have heard!

[Rob Instigator]

Sonic Nurse is the best album put out by SY out of their last 4-5.

I still canniot bring myself to spin The Eternal. It depresses me still that SY is no more.

RR is a cool album, with some great tunes, but as a whole it is not top 5 material. Murray Street to me was good too, but again, a bit of a tepid slog. I miss the adrenaline rush SY used to give me. Sonic Nurse is the last SY album that still gives me that OOOOMPPPHHHH from the skronk rock.

[evollove]

Does anyone agree that "Pattern Recognition" is a great song, the best song on the album? Meaning: the rest of the album is something of a let-down?

[Rob Instigator]

the best song on Nurse is I Love YOu Golden Blue. It rules, and is something of a successor to Shadow of a Doubt for me. Golden Blue is just straight up perfect, especially if you are driving alone late at night through back country roads. very sad song.

after that I would say Pattern Recognition is second, but it makes a great album opener for sure.

Dude Ranch Nurse, and then Mariah Carey and the Arthur Doyle Hand Creme come next to round out my top 4 off Nurse. It has some of the best KIM stuff ever.

[Severian]

I don't think it's the best, but I can see how a major Sonic Youth fan might think so. To me, as an album, it's actually not very strong, yet it is full of great great songs. It's not like DDN or Murray Street, both albums defined by their beginning to end flow; it's more like a compilation of individual songs that don't seem to have a whole lot to do with one another. But they're some of the best songs the band came up with on the second half of their career.

Pattern Recognition comes closer to the intensity of DDN and Sister than any other song of the '90s or '00s.

[Severian]

Pattern Recognition, Dripping Dream, I Love You Golden Blue, Peace Attack. Those are the highlights.

As albums, I prefer Murray Street and Ripped, but in terms of individual songs, Nurse is just incredible. If you play everything after PR on shuffle, abd leave the last two songs in their original places, then yeah- it's up there.

Funny thing: it wasn't until I saw "unmade bed" live that I really understood how influential hardcore was to Sonic Youth's sound. I was in my twenties and had been listening to Sonic Youth for a decade, and it was nowhere near my first Sonic Youth show. But something about the song's live execution- not to mention that it's one of their most mellow songs and it still rocked like hell- made a lightbulb turn on above my head.

[EVOLghost]

Interesting respknse to unmade bed severian. And I'm glad you sai drippin dream as it is my favorite song of that album. The way it transitions turns me on to the max. Oh god...and that outtro!!!!

Sonic nurse is definitely top 5 material IMO.

[Severian]

Originally Posted by Magic Wheel Memory

That depends on whether you are following the rules of British English or American English. The British consider "Sonic Youth" to be plural, as they do with teams names and other groups. In America, we treat it as a "collective noun," which makes it singular. In other words, when we say "Sonic Youth," we are referring to a single band, not the collection of individuals who comprise the band.

I'm sure that's more explanation than anyone gives a crap to read! :+)

No, it's not too much. In fact it's about damn time. Thank you. Someone needed to explain this in simple terms.

As for me, I don't care about what the Brits do. The band is called Sonic Youth. Like Black Sabbath. Collective noun all day long. The cover of Sister was a fluke.
I had a friend in college who referred to them as "the" Sonic Youth all the time and it sounded pretentious as hell.

I'm not sure why... But he was a pretentious son of a bitch anyway, so there you go.

[Genteel Death]

Severian is a '' I want to be a Pitchfork faggot'' sort of guy. Why is he complaining about shit?

[hypertonic]

I don't think it's the best, but I can see how a major Sonic Youth fan might think so. To me, as an album, it's actually not very strong, yet it is full of great great songs. It's not like DDN or Murray Street, both albums defined by their beginning to end flow; it's more like a compilation of individual songs that don't seem to have a whole lot to do with one another. But they're some of the best songs the band came up with on the second half of their career.

Pattern Recognition comes closer to the intensity of DDN and Sister than any other song of the '90s or '00s.]

Perhaps this has something to do with the post 2000 era of the single-song-format (itunes or download) release concept vs. entire album concept thing, intentionally or not. I wouldn't think that SY would approach it that way, but it does seem like the ideas/concepts are compressed down to individual songs. It seems like the album is a mishmash of influences, from William Gibson/PKD to Bush, the Richard Prince Nurse artwork/paintings. I wish I knew more about what the influences and making of this album were. The songs are great, and sometimes SY's off-kilter odd song or take on things was part of their charm. I still think Nurse was one of their better, later records and kinda represented to me, what I thought there aiming to do, which was meld a certain brand of sonic pop noise rock hybrid. Nurse was, to me the best execution, and one of the SY albums that far surpassed my expectations. I kinda always wanted an inverse Sonic Nurse where most of the tracks sounded like Arthur Doyle/Mariah Carey, and only a couple tracks were melodic. I remember telling my buddies, okay THIS is better than Zepplin.. (talking about Stones) I'm thankful I got to see them in 2004 when I really got back into the band.

(....my Pitchfork piece, hah)

[Severian]

It was the Sonic Youth album I listened toots recently. Definitely great. I picked it over everything else I own yesterday because of this thread alone.