Sonic Youth, Turner Hall Ballroom, Milwaukee, 7/20/09

sonicyouth

There’s this moment at 4:49 in “Rain On Tin” (from the band’s 2002 album Murray Street) that is simply one of the most gorgeous, joyous, thrilling moments of music I’ve ever heard. Like travelling to a whole new dimension of awesomeness. Seriously, if you listen to it right now, LOUD, your entire life will improve by about 11%.

The song begins with a dissonant drone and a short vocal from Thurston before it meanders into a lovely instrumental at the one-minute mark, anchored by Steve’s tom-toms and that signature ticking eighth-note rhythm. Then it takes another left turn and begins building into an unholy maelstrom of sound that swirls faster and higher and more insistent until it seems poised to blast off, explode, something. Then, when it finally does, the song—now the very definition of yearning—cascades into an exhilarating, exhausting release, tumbling out of the speakers like redemption.

The next few minutes of the song bring you down easy, veering back into that familiar rhythm, helping you catch your breath, before finally ebbing away. It’s nothing so much as an aural orgasm.

The performance of “Anti-Orgasm” at Monday’s show was a perfect counterpoint, the spectacle of the song exactly in tune with the music itself. Backed by murals that recalled Matisse cutouts (or Yves Klein’s works that apply paint with the female body),

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the band’s stage setup seemed pretty tame, pretty mature. Then the murals started mutating, changing colors. And flashing like a bad acid trip. Then the strobes on either side of the stage kicked in, as did the klieg light grids that shone directly into the audience. I felt like an elderly epileptic witnessing it, wondering, “How do these guys do it night after night? Kim Gordon is old enough to be my mother!”

Anyhow, after opening with the new single” Sacred Trickster” and playing most of new release The Eternal (including my favorite song on it, Lee Ranaldo’s “Walkin Blue”), the band, sounding perfectly tight, went all-in with “Anti-Orgasm.” Same swirling, ascending crescendo as “Rain On Tin,” moving toward the inevitable peak, and then—nothing. The peak never came. The song held there interminably, then just sort of petered out into a coda of noise, even as the pulsing klieg lights spelled out O-R-G-A-S-M over and over again. Incredibly frustrating. An anti-orgasm, in fact. And doing that to a wound-up capacity audience of over a thousand…that is a really good joke.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG38KNQGyy8[/youtube]

Great show. I don’t know how long Sonic Youth will be around, but I hope it’s for a long time to come. Given their longevity and status as one of the most sane, functional bands in rock, it seems likely. The first encore, the new song “What We Know,” ends like this:

It’s been quite a ride
With you, my sweet, here by my side
….
Our bodies vibrate slowly
Yeah, that we know
Bound together heart and soul
That’s what we know about us.

Sounds like a promise to me.

sonicyouthsimpsons

12 responses to “Sonic Youth, Turner Hall Ballroom, Milwaukee, 7/20/09”

  1. g.a. says:

    I’d forgotten about that song from Murray Street. Thanks for linking to it. I also loved your description of the show and the sentimental ending too.

    Have you seen the anti-gentrification video for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKlbBgQHPqo&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fevgrieve.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dsonic%2Byouth&feature=player_embedded"Sacred Trickster?

  2. g.a. says:

    Try again:

    Have you seen the anti-gentrification video for Sacred Trickster?

  3. Dave says:

    I’ve also been in awe of Sonic Youth’s continued energy and relevance when I’ve seen them in concert. Truly one of the great bands of all time.

    And on that topic: y’all have heard that Yo La Tengo is releasing an album this fall, right? W00t!

  4. Rachel says:

    The new YLT song “Periodically Double or Triple” is floating around in the aether…definitely worth checking out.

  5. Sonic Youth is one of those bands (the others being The Fall and Gang of 4) where I intensely love one record of theirs (in this case “Bad Moon Rising”) but have never yet got it together to become a fan, listen to more of their music, get familiar with the sound outside of this one record. Thanks for the review — now I am looking forward to hearing “Rain on Tin” when I get home this evening.

  6. Tim says:

    Thanks for the review, Rachel! I love the new SY record, which I haven’t been able to say in a few years. Rather Ripped has its moments, but it sounds like warmed-over re-hashes of earlier material to me. The Eternal is really great all the way through, and the vinyl release is amazing — great sound, beautiful reproductions of really great art (cover painting by John Fahey! That John Fahey? I’m not sure but I hope so).

    I skipped them on the last tour (yes, always a mistake), but will definitely make it to the LA stop this time, thanks in part to your descriptions here.

  7. J-Man says:

    g.a.: that video is rad! I’d love to do that sometime. But, in truth, I’d probably be one of the guests at the hipster party. That’s so lame.

  8. Marleyfan says:

    I want my life to improve by 11%.
    SSW is due tomorrow!!!
    I met Slade last night, very enjoyable, still want to meet you…

  9. lane says:

    of course they’re great, i don’t really like that much of their music, but they are great.

    isn’t “sonic youth” just one of the greatest band names ever? . . .

  10. For a similarly increasing-your-quality-of-life moment take a listen to the solo at 2:10 of this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-Z2GHgS2R0

  11. (“quality-of-life-enhancing” would be a better choice of adjective.)

  12. Tim says:

    Here’s another song from the upcoming Yo La Tengo record. Very nice.