timeline

Sonic Youth

A New York guitar band that grew out of the city's noise scene in 1981, pushed feedback and altered tunings into rock songs for thirty years, and made Daydream Nation, the record many critics treat as the center of American indie rock.

Origin
New York City, United States
Years active
1981-2011
Genres
noise rock, indie rock, experimental rock, alternative rock, no wave, art rock
Labels
Neutral, Homestead, Blast First, SST, Enigma, DGC, Geffen, Matador

Noise Fest

Thurston Moore moved to New York City in early 1977 and played in Room Tone and the Coachmen. With Kim Gordon he then formed a band that went through the names Male Bonding, Red Milk and the Arcadians. In mid-1981 they settled on Sonic Youth, a mash of MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith and the reggae artist Big Youth. Their first show was at the Noise Fest at White Columns in June 1981. Lee Ranaldo, then playing in Glenn Branca's guitar ensemble, saw it and was invited to join.

The band's sound rested on unorthodox tunings, guitars prepared with drumsticks and screwdrivers, and feedback. The drum stool changed often at first: Richard Edson left in 1982 for KONK and Bob Bert took over, and the first tour that November supported Swans. Jim Sclavunos drummed on Confusion Is Sex (1983), released on Branca's Neutral label, then quit after a European tour. Bert came back until Steve Shelley replaced him in June 1985, and Shelley stayed to the end. Bad Moon Rising had come out in March 1985, recorded at Martin Bisi's BC Studio in Brooklyn with Lydia Lunch singing on its closer.

The SST years

With Shelley in place the band made EVOL in March 1986 at BC Studio in Brooklyn, and signed to SST. Mike Watt guested on bass, and the record closes with Expressway to Yr. Skull. Sister followed in June 1987, loosely inspired by the writer Philip K. Dick, and opens with Schizophrenia. It did not sell well at the time, but it has since collected some of the highest scores the band ever received.

Daydream Nation came out in October 1988 on Enigma. Moore had written so much, and the songs stretched so far in the studio, that it became a double album, made over three weeks at Greene St. in SoHo with the engineer Nick Sansano. It reached number 99 in the UK and did not chart in the US, yet it topped the CMJ year-end list and was named number 1 among the albums of the 1980s by Pitchfork in 2002. The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry. Its first single was Teen Age Riot.

Geffen

Disappointed by how Daydream Nation was marketed and distributed, the band moved to DGC, part of Geffen, in 1990. Goo cost about $150,000, roughly five times as much as its predecessor, and included a guest turn from Chuck D on Kool Thing. It was their first album on the Billboard 200, where it reached number 96. Dirty, made in 1992 with Butch Vig, who had just produced Nevermind, reached number 6 in the UK, their best placing there, and spawned Sugar Kane.

Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star (1994) got to number 34 in the US. In 1995 the band headlined Lollapalooza and released Washing Machine, which was partly recorded in Memphis and ends with the nearly twenty-minute The Diamond Sea. AllMusic's Erlewine called it the band's best record since Daydream Nation.

The long finish

In 1999 the band's instruments were stolen from their tour van in Orange County, and Jim O'Rourke joined that year. The albums kept coming: A Thousand Leaves in 1998, the first made at their own Echo Canyon studio, then NYC Ghosts & Flowers in 2000, Murray Street in 2002, Sonic Nurse in 2004 and Rather Ripped in 2006, when O'Rourke left and Mark Ibold arrived on bass. In 2008 they left Geffen for Matador, which issued The Eternal in 2009. It reached number 18 in the US, their best American placing.

Gordon and Moore announced their separation on 14 October 2011. The band's last show was at the SWU festival in Paulinia, Brazil, on 14 November 2011, and the last song they played was Teen Age Riot. Moore called it a hiatus in 2014. Gordon told her side in the memoir Girl in a Band (2015) and Moore his in Sonic Life (2023), and in 2020 the band opened an archive on Bandcamp. Nirvana, Pavement, Sleater-Kinney, Dinosaur Jr., Mogwai, Fugazi and Superchunk are among the bands who have cited them as an influence.

Members

Records

Songs

Glenn Branca, Swans, Dinosaur Jr., Nirvana, Pavement

Where to go next

Official

Reference

Writing and criticism

Interviews

Live performance archives

Fan sites and communities

Sources

  1. Sonic Youth, Wikipedia
  2. Sonic Youth Archive, Bandcamp
  3. Sonic Youth setlists and statistics, setlist.fm
  4. Sonic Youth, Goo, uDiscover Music
  5. Interview with Sonic Youth, SLUG Magazine (1992-12-02)
  6. Daydream Nation: Deluxe Edition, Pitchfork (2007-06-13)
  7. Sonic Youth, Washing Machine and other master releases, Discogs