Sonic Youth: “Expressway To Yr. Skull”

For as much as Sonic Youth has influenced the outline of music writing in this little online space, there might not be a single write-up devoted to the seminal alt rock gods of the 90s and beyond.

Known for altered tunings and terminally cool NYC underground vamping, the four-piece of Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Steve Shelley, and Lee Ranaldo plant an early flag in their myth-making landscape with the epic “Expressway To Yr. Skull.”

The song was a great closer, because it’s designed to descend into complete chaos, rebuild itself whole from the thousand and one exploded fragments of noise, and then, most nights, annihilate itself one more time before you say “Adios!” to the audience.

On the recent collection of Sonic Youth obscurities, the Walls Have Ears 2xLP, we’re treated with an especially soft and gentle outro. Which goes to show what made the band different when it came to feedback, noise, chaos. Unlike most of their peers in the 90s who always dialed it up to 11, Sonic Youth knew how to massage the feedback so it could roar like a lion one moment and purr like a kitten the next.

That’s a good band, eh?

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