‘The Blue Album’ at 40
Recalling the singularity of Sonic Youth’s 1982 debut
Dear Gen-X’ers: If you want to feel your age today, then consider this: Sonic Youth’s self-titled debut turns forty this month.
I refer to Gen-X’ers, but the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of Sonic Youth’s early audience were undoubtedly baby boomers. If you were checking out the band in 1982 when you were in your twenties — as most early Sonic Youth fans were — then you were definitely born prior to 1965.
Formed in 1981 by guitarist Thurston Moore and his future wife, bassist Kim Gordon, the band originally featured Anne DeMarinis on keyboards. Drummer and future actor Richard Edson rounded out the quartet. Guitarist Lee Ranaldo replaced DeMarinis when the band reconvened following its performance at the legendary Noise Fest at White Columns gallery in June of ’81. Ranaldo had also performed at that festival, which was the brainchild of Thurston Moore. The band’s name was also coined by Moore — the group’s unofficial leader — and is part tribute to Big Youth of reggae fame and part salute to Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith of the legendary Detroit combo MC5.
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere in the past, given the sheer enormity of their discography, it seems as if every other month one of Sonic Youth’s records is celebrating a milestone anniversary. But this one is a little extra special, considering as how it’s their first.
It’s also the only Sonic Youth album to utilise standard guitar tuning exclusively. To those who equate the band with the chaotic ‘pop noise’ stylings established through their mid-to-late-’80s releases, this might be seen as not only unique in the SY canon, but also an attribute that somewhat defeats the purpose. Sorry, people, but sometimes a butterfly flaps its wings and that’s the end of it.
Recorded on 24-track at Radio City Music Hall Studios in New York City in December of 1981 and January of 1982, ‘The Blue Album’ (as it’s known in some circles, owing to its cover’s trim colour) was originally released on Glenn Branca’s Neutral label the following March. Clocking in at just over 24 minutes and containing only five tracks, the album might be better described as an EP — as many later Sonic Youth releases are, including those from the SYR series that run close to or over an hour in length. The record, however, stands most singularly as their recording debut, and it is undoubtedly for this reason that it is recognised by the band as Album One.
Along with the standard guitar tuning, there is the singular presence of Richard Edson on drums.
“I remember Richard trying to structure our songs,” Kim Gordon told Ignacio Julià and Jaime Gonzalo in the early 1990s. “Richard had a lot to do with the way we were playing this music,” Thurston Moore told the same Spanish music journalists. “He had ideas for arranging, which we didn’t. For us it was like throw it to the wind and create a bunch of excitement. It wasn’t that major a thing, but he actually did do things like that, which was kind of interesting.” (I Dreamed of Noise, 1994)
In short, owing to his Latino and African influences, Edson brought an almost danceable, rototom-driven quasi funk to the mix — something that would elude all future Sonic Youth albums.
Edson’s drumming and Gordon’s bass certainly drive the album’s upbeat opening track, ‘The Burning Spear’. Kicked off with a cymbal crash, the band’s ‘calling card’ is also rendered unique by clanging percussed guitar and Ranaldo’s use of a contact-mic’ed electric drill in the buildup to Moore’s truncated vocal towards the end. The sole stanza of esoteric verse makes reference to the music of Burning Spear (a.k.a. Winston Rodney), the legendary Jamaican reggae/dub singer-songwriter.
The opener’s driving rhythm and lyrical asymmetry is in considerable contrast to the laidback groove and layered, meandering vocals of the following number, ‘I Dreamed I Dream’. Featuring the overlapped chanting and crooning of Gordon and Ranaldo on two separate tracks, the song is vaguely reminiscent of The Velvet Underground’s ‘Murder Mystery’ on one level. The feverish lyrics, usually attributed to Edson and Ranaldo, actually sound like the plot to some surreal mini-mystery of disenfranchised urban youth: “He’s standing by the door… / He’s got something in his hands… / All the money’s gone…”. According to Edson, the band would obtain lyrics by “using the William Burroughs method of cutting up words from a newspaper article or randomly picking words and phrases out of anything printed that was lying around the studio” (Sonic Youth liner notes, 2006). This explains a lot, and should come as no surprise to longtime listeners.
Closing out Side One is a decidedly low-key exercise in quirky funk minimalism. Seemingly unsure of its destination, the lyrically challenged ‘She is Not Alone’ is propelled leisurely forward by tribal drum beats and effected guitar skronk. When the plunking subsides, Gordon’s bass burrows in the midrange in anticipation of the vocals. Moore then intones the haunting titular lyric repeatedly until the track ends on a note of relief or regret — you be the judge.
The tribal drumming reaches the level of full-out stomp on ‘I Don’t Want to Push It’, the Side Two opener. Easily the most frenetic of the five tracks, one gets the impression that Gordon is doing her very damnedest in order to keep apace with Edson, while the two guitarists play ‘cheese-grater’ with their strings in a manner that actually foreshadows The Edge’s playing on U2’s ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’. The lyrics, written by Gordon, are the record’s most conventional in regards to style and symmetry. Moore’s delivery of them, however, is a bit on the ‘ethereal’ side in terms of pitch. According to Alec Foege’s 1994 band biography, Confusion is Next, Moore was suffering from a cold at the time, and has referred to his vocals as the “stuffed-up nose take”.
The album closes with a nearly eight-minute instrumental entitled ‘The Good and the Bad’. The track’s singularity is compounded by the presence of Moore on bass and Gordon on second guitar — a ‘switch-up’ vaguely suggestive of avant-garde composition in the John Cage or La Monte Young tradition. A basic groove is quickly established and perpetuated by Edson and Moore. Gordon and Ranaldo complement the subtle, rolling funk with dissonant downward strums until all four go off in different directions of improv for about three minutes. The discord out of their systems, everyone returns to the initial funky groove before it all ends in a crescendo of cymbal splatter.
Topping off the album is a front cover that features two adjacent images of the band from the same photo shoot against a murky silver-white background. It is reminiscent of early Warhol portraits and the original ‘silver’ Factory — both products of that 1960s New York environment that also spawned The Velvet Underground, a major influence on the band. The aforementioned blue quadrilateral trim brings to mind the geometric album cover art of Factory Records — the British label that gave the world Joy Division and New Order.
Sonic Youth was released in the 12-inch LP format in March of 1982. There have been three official vinyl reissues of the record in the years since. The German label Zensor, who released the band’s Kill Yr. Idols EP in 1983, reissued it in a lilac-tinted album cover in February of 1984. SST, after signing the band in the mid ’80s, reissued it in 1987 with cover art identical to the original but emphasising, along three of the edges and on the spine, an extra ‘frame’ of blue trim that — whether intentionally or accidentally — was only suggested on the Neutral original. SST also released the first CD version of the album that same year, as well as the first cassette version. The latter consists of all five original tracks on Side One, and the same tracks played backward from last to first on Side Two. Geffen/DGC, who carried the band in the 1990s and early to mid 2000s, originally intended to reissue the record in 1995 along with the six other ’80s Sonic Youth albums that they re-released. Citing a lack of viable bonus tracks at the time, a reissue didn’t occur until 2006, when a deluxe, remastered 2-LP version was released in a gatefold sleeve as part of the Chronicles collection. Seven previously unreleased live tracks from a September 18th/’81 performance at New York’s New Pilgrim Theatre and an early instrumental studio version of ‘I Dreamed I Dream’, ‘Where the Red Fern Grows’, comprise the second record. The front-cover art was identical to the original but bearing no outer frame of blue trim whatsoever. This version was also issued in CD format.
Similar to Joy Division serving as the ‘missing link’ between earlier art-rock acts (The Doors, Velvet Underground, Bowie) and the New York ‘noise’ scene that Sonic Youth was part of, the first Sonic Youth album serves as the bridge from Joy Division and the No Wave bands to Sonic Youth’s later sound and the numerous alternative and grunge bands that that sound inspired.
Sadly, the lineup that made Sonic Youth had splintered before said record was even issued. Truth be told, drummer Richard Edson’s stronger loyalties lay with Konk, the horn-based Afro-punk dance band he had co-founded months earlier. He would go on to moderate success with the combo, releasing a series of singles and an album over the next few years before turning his attention to acting. For better or worse (or neither), Sonic Youth would never sound quite the same again. The search for a new drummer and a new existence was on.
The funky post-punk phase of the band was over. The darkness, chaos and confusion were just around the bend.
