I’ve never been a big Sonic Youth fan. For a long time the only song of theirs I could stomach was “Death Valley ‘69,” and then only because it was about everybody’s favorite foster child provider, Charles Manson. They were simply too humorless and NYC No Wave (as in “let’s make a pretentious and formless din!”) for my particular noise rock tastes.
It wasn’t until 1988’s Daydream Nation, that accessible masterpiece, that I finally found I could listen to them without shouting, “Write a real song! Quit being so “kool”! And don’t ever let Kim Gordon sing!” (Which she unfortunately does on “My Friend Goo” off 1990’s Goo, with hilariously horrifying results.) Indeed, one of Sonic Youth’s big problems, for me anyway, has always been their lack of a front person with even an iota of charisma. Neither Gordon nor Shelley is capable of projecting emotion; they’re machines who have placed their faith in other machines—namely their guitars—and the front man be damned.
But an even bigger problem with Sonic Youth is that they play art-noise, and that art part rankles. They’re serious about their place in the avant-garde, and one gets get the idea they spend hours at a time listening to experimental artists of the past and present, and would succumb to sheer elitist mortification if forced to listen to a Kix album. Whereas the noise bands I like (Killdozer, Cows, The Jesus Lizard, U.S. Maple) could care less. Shannon Selberg of Cows didn’t develop his extraordinary bugle skills by listening to Steve Reich, John Cage or, god forbid, Yoko Ono; he just picked the thing up and started blowing on it.
In short, unlike Sonic Youth, which released a song “Audience” that sounds like cows goose stepping on 2006’s An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music, most of my favorite noise rock bands don’t have an avant-garde bone in their bodies, although the defunct U.S. Maple’s deconstructionist tendencies could, I suppose, cause it to be placed under the art umbrella. But I’ll forgive U.S. Maple anything thanks to their vocalist Al Johnson, who was not only compelling but also downright creepy in a Sammy Johns’ “Chevy Van” kind of way.
The bottom line is that while I can usually find a couple of decent songs on any given Sonic Youth LP—“Mildred Pierce,” “Hot Wire My Heart,” “Sugar Kane,” and “Brave Men (Run in My Family,” to say nothing of such non-album covers as the Carpenters’ “Superstar” and Bob Dylan’s “I’m Not There”—for the most part I can take ‘em or leave ‘em, with my preference being the latter. I tend to agree with my pal Jay, who happily wrote them off as producers of “Artless art rock no-hook no wave dada for doofi.”
But every thorn has its rose, and it was only recently that I discovered 1990’s “4 Tunna Brix,” a Sonic Youth EP consisting of covers of Fall songs (or in the case of “Victoria, a cover of a Fall cover of a Kinks song). Recorded by ultimate Fall fan boy the late John Peel for his radio program in 1988, the EP’s title made reference to Mark E. Smith’s ex-wife and former Fall guitarist Brix Smith, which is mildly misleading given that only one of the three Fall originals were recorded during her tenure with the band. But this is the Fall we’re talking about, and who can keep of the band’s hundreds of former members? As Smith himself famously said, “If it’s me and your granny on bongos, then it’s [the] Fall.”
Everybody knows the Sonic Youth story, so I don’t need to do any major recounting here. The band—which is currently on hiatus due to a fissure in the marriage of bassist/vocalist Kim Gordon and guitarist/vocalist Thurston Moore—was formed in 1981, and promptly proceeded to make a prodigious racket, thanks to their odd guitar tunings and habit of altering their guitars’ timbre with things like screwdrivers, frozen fish sticks, and Jerry Garcia’s missing finger.
If I’d had to guess back then, I’d have said they were doomed to a short existence, seeing as how they were always ready to sacrifice melody on the altar of mayhem. But (no Nostradamus, I) instead they accrued a significant audience that only grew in size as their LPs gradually became less, er, abrasive. In 1990 they signed to major label DGC and released Goo, which was as shockingly listenable as Daydream Nation, although since then they’ve been releasing commercial and experimental LPs in equal measure. Oh, and before I forget, Sonic Youth’s other members during the “4 Tunna Brix” era included Lee Ranaldo on guitar and vocals and Steve Shelley on drums and percussion.
I’ve seen “4 Tunna Brix” called an “official bootleg,” which sounds like an oxymoron to me, but who am I? It opens with the 8-minute “My New House” off The Fall’s 1985 LP This Nation’s Saving Grace. Sonic Youth takes the song and stretches it out by a good three minutes, for no good reason that I’ve been able to ascertain. Their version is decent enough, and surprisingly they stick quite close to the original. Somebody does a pretty decent Smith imitation, and I like the layered vocals and the way somebody keeps saying, “Ok now, the chorus!” But overall the Sonic Youth version fails to capture the unique instrumental nuances of The Fall version, and as for those additional three minutes, Sonic Youth doesn’t do much with them but add some whistling and slow things down some while throwing in a guitar that sounds like it was recorded underwater and a primitive keyboard as the song slowly peters out.
“Rowche Rumble” is even less successful, in part because the vocals are subpar and Sonic Youth’s distorted guitars run roughshod over the original’s more primitive adherence to clanking rhythms and repetition. Once again Sonic Youth tries to remain faithful to the original, but their altered guitars simply can’t compete with the deranged keyboards of The Fall version. Sonic Youth’s take is all distorted guitar wank and pounding drums, and while the guitar mayhem is impressive in its way, it distracts from the song rather than enhancing it—a problem (sound trumps song) I’ve had with plenty of Sonic Youth tunes over the years.
Sonic Youth’s cover of “Psycho Mafia” is indeed different from the original; they crank it out at hardcore speed, and nobody is trying to impersonate Smith. The Sonic Youth version is a good two times faster than The Fall version, but once again something is lost as they roll over and flatten out the Fall’s inimitable hiccupping rhythms. Still, I like their take, even if I’m not wild about the vocals; it’s all sound and fury, and they’re in and out before you know what hit you. And for once the guitars don’t distract your attention away from the song, probably because they don’t sound altered or distorted to the nth degree.
As for the EP’s closer, “Victoria,” it’s great. It opens with a wonderful scream and lots of caterwaul, but then an acoustic guitar comes in and a bevy of voices sing—or shout at times—the song. It’s a ragged take, raw and funny as they take the piss, and for some reason it reminds me of the Beatles having a lark. Voices jump in and out, hands get clapped, and Sonic Youth demonstrates they’re capable of two things I would never have credited them with—good humor and high-spiritedness. In short, the deadly serious no wave avant gardists sound like they’re having fun. Even the brief guitar interlude is backed by vocals like a football chant, and the song ends with someone shouting, “Twist your head!”
All in all, “4 Tunna Brix” is a mixed affair, and most likely of interest only to Sonic Youth and Fall completists. None of its covers are as good as “Superstar” or “I’m Not There” or “Hot Wire My Heart,” but they’re all worth a listen, especially “Victoria.” What the EP says to me is that The Fall does some indefinable something that can’t be reproduced, caught, or captured—they’re the Loch Ness Monster of rock. But Sonic Youth is similarly singular; both bands have gone their iconoclastic ways, and let the world be damned. I prefer The Fall; you may prefer Sonic Youth. But one thing’s for sure: there’s an abyss between the two bands, and if you stare into it long enough, you’ll see “Victoria.”
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B-
