Sonic Youth

The People's Bailout

Yeah, banks, we can bail 
out our own, too

SST Records Legend and Music Scribe Joe Carducci on His New Book and Throwing Sonic Youth's Cassette Into the Demo Pile in 1985

By Brad Cohan Joe Carducci not only played a monumental role in helping run and co-own SST Records in its glorious 1980's heyday when Black Flag, Minutemen, Hüsker Dü and Meat Puppets were the reigning kings of the Amerindie underground, but he also famously penned the lyrics for the Minutemen's ... More >>

I Was A Teenage Jam Band Scenester: Coming Around On The Ominous Seapods And Other Life Lessons

Through a series of maybe not-so-unfortunate events, I was a teenage jam band scenester, which, when properly italicized and luridly capitalized, sounds like a sordid music-crit version of a '50s exploitation paperback. But the truth is, I wasn't seduced by drugs, sex, or anything else until college ... More >>

Butch Vig On Nevermind, Siamese Dream, Garbage, And His History Of Shaping Alternative Rock As We Know It

If you don't think Butch Vig's almost singlehandedly invented two decades of alternative rock as we know it, just look at his resumé: Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Green Day, Jimmy Eat World, Foo Fighters, AFI. That's without mentioning his membership in the still-cool Garbage or the fact he prod ... More >>

Sonic Youth (5) Gets Experimental With Philip Glass (4) In SOTC's March Madness

Sound of the City's search for the quintessential New York City musician enters Round Two this week, with battles in the Round of 32 daily. Keep up with all the action here. During the first sound of SOTC' March Madness, Sonic Youth drowned Arthur Russell in feedback, and The Fugs were no match f ... More >>

Sonic Youth (5) And Arthur Russell (12) Close Out Round One Of SOTC's March Madness

​The Round of 64 for Sound of the City's own version of March Madness—in which you, the Sound of the City voting public, help determine the quintessential New York musician—finishes this weekend, with the Round of 32 kicking off Monday. (The schedule and results so far are here; the fu ... More >>

Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo Unveils a 30-Years-in-the-Making Solo Debut

Lee is free

This Week In The Voice: Ital's Spin Control, Lee Ranaldo Steps Out, And Why You Shouldn't Hate Boy Bands

In this week's Village Voice, out now: Michaelangelo Matos profiles Daniel Martin-McCormick, the Brooklyn electronic musician with widespread acclaim and punk rock roots; Jesse Jarnow talks to Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo, who just released his first solo album; and I defend the boy band against the sn ... More >>

CYBERPUNKS

Pop. 1280 marches through Saint Vitus Bar

Live: Lee Ranaldo Plays It Straight At Glasslands

​Lee Ranaldo Glasslands Gallery Saturday, December 17 Better than: Another '90s band playing a '90s album start to finish. There wasn't a whole lot of noise from Lee Ranaldo's new quartet under the cloth clouds at Glasslands on Saturday, but there was plenty of crunch. Removing the art ab ... More >>

Live: Sonic Youth Get Caught Between Bad Moon Rising and New York City

Sonic Youth w/Wild Flag, Kurt Vile Williamsburg Waterfront Friday, August 12 Better than: Listening to a playlist of the set on Spotify. Just before Sonic Youth played "Starfield Road," from 1994's Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star, at Friday night's Williamsburg Waterfront gig, singer-guit ... More >>

Q&A: Disappears' Brian Case On Krautrock, Sonic Youth, And Ascending Rapidly And Metaphorically Into The Stratosphere

​ As a sobriquet, Disappears strongly implies some sort of vanishing point: stillness, quiescence, minimal house music. The reality, of course, is different the way a sledgehammer differs from a ball-peen hammer. On record, this Chicago quartet is all presence: a shuddering combustion-engine s ... More >>

Sonic Youth and Wild Flag Are Playing the Williamsburg Waterfront In August!

​Via Sonic Youth's Twitter comes this wonderful bit of news: The iconic New York rockers will storm the beaches of the Williamsburg Waterfront on August 12. Joining them will be the supergroup Wild Flag, made up of Sleater-Kinney members Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss, as well as Mary Timon ... More >>

Ted Leo, Titus Andronicus, Tune-Yards, And Dan Deacon Lead Bonkers Our Band Could Be Your Life All-Covers Tribute Show

​This show is crazy: To celebrate the 10th anniversary of Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life -- an exhaustive history of '80s-indie giants from Sonic Youth to Fugazi to Black Flag -- the Bowery Ballroom is hosting a one-night-only parade of modern alt. superstars covering the bands ... More >>

Rock-Critic Pop Quiz: Can You Name All Four Bands on No New York?

​A few weeks ago, James Murphy, reluctant voice to a generation of record-obsessed man-children, announced that LCD Soundsystem was going to call it quits, culminating in a fascinating pushing-and-shoving match for farewell concert tickets. Seriously, it was like Black Friday for doughy people ... More >>

PROM, TAKE 2

Make it count this time—ask her out!

Northampton Wools

Live Streams From Matador 21 Start Tonight With Pavement, Sonic Youth, And Fucked Up

​It's understandable, your depression/jealousy/irritation at not being physically present in Las Vegas this weekend for Matador Records' bizarrely elaborate Matador at 21 spectacle, featuring just about every major label act you could possibly desire unless you're, like, a die-hard Thinking Fe ... More >>

Text of Light & Lee Ranaldo

Live: Sonic Youth Draws a Gazillion People to Prospect Park

Sonic Youth's "Express Way To Yr Skull (Live in Prospect Park)" from Big Ass Lens. There was this terrific moment Saturday night during the encore of Sonic Youth's terrifyingly mobbed Prospect Park show, just after they'd finished Daydream Nation thriller "Silver Rocket" amid a strobe-light finale, ... More >>

'Hallogallo 2010! Presents Michael Rother & Friends'

Welcome to Avant Garde Preschool, Featuring Professor Thurston Moore

​For the parents in the SOTC audience--are you a total scumbag if you take your kid to an hour-long dissertation on white noise by one of the founding members of Sonic Youth, or are you dad of the year? Does it matter that it's for charity? Is anyone in possession of an 8-year-old who would a ... More >>

Love of Diagrams

And the Guest Curator of All Tomorrow's Parties NY 2010 Is . . . Jim Jarmusch!

Thanks And the list of ATP NY guest curators, so far, goes like this: My Bloody Valentine, 2008; Flaming Lips, 2009; Jim Jarmusch, 2010! Just having the dude there last year was amazing, having him curate is a total other thing. Tom Waits, anybody? Also, more band announcements below, including Son ... More >>

A Fucked Up Diss Song Targeted at Sonic Youth Exists, Is Called "Cranking To Sonic Youth"

We're gonna explain who this mischievous dude is in a second. His name is Ben Rayner. Photo via Vice.​Some backstory here: At last year's ATP New York, VBS.TV's Ian Svenonius goaded Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon to uncharacteristically attack their labelmates and fellow punk rock ... More >>

Tonight! Thurston, Jimmy, Julian, or Wiz.

​Somewhat of a slow night, unless you're in for the Pixies at Hammerstein (featuring Jay Reatard!) or Sonic Youth at the Music Hall of Williamsburg (featuring, uh, Talk Normal!). Jimmy Buffett's at Madison Square Garden if you're into booze-soaked, beachy frivolity; Julian Plenti, a/k/a the Du ... More >>

The Feelies

News Roundup: Vampire Weekend Comment Bombs, Sonic Youth, Public Enemy, LCD Soundsystem

​--The free download of Vampire Weekend's new track "Horchata" has shaken the dust off the intractable divides between the army of anons. Over at Brooklyn Vegan, we see college students ("The F. Scott Fitzgerald of American Indie Rock") pitted against college students ("...it's like the whiffe ... More >>

News Roundup: Girls Album Listening Party, Music at Fashion's Night Out, Ellen DeGeneres Takes American Idol, Lee Ranaldo's Broken Wrist

​--If you somehow haven't heard Album, the sublime glazed-over debut by San Francisco's Girls, Impose and Insound are holding a listening party for the record--and for fellow Matador signees Times New Viking's Born Again Revisited--at Bruar Falls in Williamsburg next Wednesday, September 16th. ... More >>

News Roundup: Aerosmith Cancels Tour, Sujfan Nearly On Sale, Sonic Youth on Gossip Girl

​--The rapidly decaying corpse of Aerosmith called the whole thing off today, canceling the rest of the band's AeroForceOne summer tour. Frontman Steven Tyler danced his way right off the stage at a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, SD last week, shattering his shoulder and amusing the entire inter ... More >>

Polvo

The Octopus Project

The Feelies

Just What Shirt Exactly Was Thurston Moore Wearing on Jimmy Fallon Last Night?

That'd be a Visitor-manufactured t-shirt lifting the porno cover art from Mokinox's Im Your Chair CD-R, which--when not obscured by a guitar and some squeamish TV cameras--looks like this:

Fluxblog Serves Up the Best of 2009 So Far (Note: Contains No Asher Roth)

Before you're officially dismissed for the weekend, please enjoy Matt "Fluxblog" Perpetua's best-of-2009-so-far mix, which nicely balances big-shots like Phoenix, Neko Case, Sonic Youth, and Animal Collective with less overexposed fare: Both the new Peaches song and the Fight Like Apes track entitle ... More >>

All Hail the Three Badass Girls in Sonic Youth's New "Sacred Trickster" Video

So what's it like being a girl in a band, Kim Gordon? Well, as we see from Sonic Youth's Tom Surgal-directed "Sacred Trickster" video, it's about trying on cocktail dresses, putting on wigs, and setting off paint ball bombs at a rooftop cocktail party with a mime waiter. Duh! "Sacred Trickster" is ... More >>

Sonic Youth's Rather Regressive Latest

The Eternal doesn't break new ground, for the first time in 20-plus years

Live: Sonic Youth at the Soho Apple Store, Which Isn't That Weird, Actually

Surreptitiously taken with an Apple product. Sonic Youth Soho Apple Store Tuesday, June 9 "It's so quiet," says Kim Gordon, and it instantly gets even quieter, everyone instinctively inhaling with anticipation, because Kim's not one for banter unless she's thought of something profound. "One wou ... More >>

On the Sonic Youth Preview of The Eternal, In Which Kim Gordon Says the Word "Orgasm"

Andrew KesinDespite the headline, I will not make a phone-sex joke here First, let me restate the utter confusion experienced this morning when the official Sonic Youth Twitter, a hilarious thing in and of itself, alerted the world to a new "audio sample" of the band's upcoming Matador release The ... More >>

Interview: Carlos Giffoni on No Fun Fest '09

"Looking at Music" at MoMA

When Free Radicals Become Free Agents

Thurston Moore goes folk, exploits Starbucks, and walks his dog, Merzbow

Is Sellout Even a Dirty Word Anymore?

Whose Nostalgia?

No R.I.P. for the rock album just yet—Sonic Youth's seminal Daydream Nation lives again at McCarren Pool.

Evil Empire Strikes Back

A rap-nostalgia bonanza feels like a rock show and sounds like a resurrection

Kool Things Remembered

Touring the frustrating but frequently brilliant Sonic Youth archives

Rather Exhilarating

The best band in the universe do their Brecht thing with hooks

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

Readers Respond to Sonic Youth Review

Sonic Euthanasia

Rubicon Beach

Sonic Youth in Occupied America