Sonic Youth – Washing Machine

Washing Machine

Sonic Youth – Washing Machine DCG DGCD-24825 (1995)

Washing Machine was a turning point for Sonic Youth.  The band had been around for a while, and the early 1990s saw them give way a bit too much to grunge/alternative rock fads, leading to what some consider (perhaps a bit unjustly) their very nadir as recording artists with Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star.  But they re-emerged with Washing Machine chock full of new ideas and began to establish themselves as rock music elders, of sorts.  At least in hindsight that is the reputation this album has earned.  Truthfully, some of the moody atmospherics and slower tempos here were already popping up on Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star in brief, undeveloped snippets.  Here those ideas are expanded to song length.  As a whole, Washing Machine is all over the place, with the fuzzy, washed out psychedelia of “The Diamond Sea” (which paves the way for A Thousand Leaves), a smooth, epic guitar anthem “Washing Machine” (paving the way for Murray Street), a beat poetry monologue “Skip Tracer” (paving the way for NYC Ghosts & Flowers), the skewed indie pop of “Little Trouble Girl” (something they seemed aiming at for a long time but hadn’t perfected until now), plus some noisy and rough guitar rock (looking back to the early 1990s).  It takes the album a while to warm up, because it opens with tepid, grungy numbers that seem almost stuck in the past.  But things pick up quickly.  There are great ideas here.  Yet, it seems like the Youth refined many of these ideas on later efforts that are often unfairly maligned.

Gerry Veenstra – Class Position and Musical Tastes

Link to an article by Gerry Veenstra:

“Class Position and Musical Tastes: A Sing-off Between the Cultural Omnivorism and Bourdieusian Homology Frameworks” (and associated press release)

Bonus link: “Bourdieu’s Disavowal of Lacan: Psychoanalytic Theory and the Concepts of ‘Habitus’ and ‘Symbolic Capital'”

Bob Dylan – Real Live

Real Live

Bob Dylan – Real Live Columbia CK 39944 (1984)

Most listeners look back on Bob Dylan’s 1980s output with regret, pondering what might have been.  Now most people look right past Saved and Shot of Love (possibly a mistake; they are okay).  They then look on Infidels with bemused sadness, wishing that “Blind Willie McTell” and other great songs hadn’t been excluded from it.  Dylan had frequented some punk concerts around that time due to his son’s interest, and in support of Infidels he appeared on the TV show “Late Night with David Letterman” in early 1984 with The Plugz as his backing band.  He captured a lot of punk energy on great renditions of “Jokerman” and “License to Kill.”  But that proved to be the only appearance of Dylan with that particular backing band.  Touring Europe later that year he instead enlisted Mick Taylor (who played on Infidels) and Ian McLagan.  He did not bring along the bass/drums rhythm section of Sly & Robbie from the Infidels sessions.  Real Live was culled from three July dates in England and Ireland.  Carlos Santana makes a guest appearance on “Tombstone Blues” from one of the English dates.  This touring band plays professionally, but largely without much personality.  The results are at best a kind of traipse through pub rock versions of mostly old Dylan standards (had Dylan been inspired by his pal Johnny Cash‘s Rockabilly Blues with its similar pub-rock influence?).  The general effect is one of aging rockers trying and failing to sound relevant to newer tastes.  It does sound a hell of a lot more modern than maybe anything in Dylan’s catalog, though.  It may not be the disaster that some make it out to be, but it’s still a pretty middling effort.  Most listeners can skip past it.  Now, if those Letterman recordings were released, those would be worth seeking out.

Pavement – Wowee Zowee

Wowee Zowee

Pavement – Wowee Zowee Matador OLE 130-2 / 45898-2 (1995)

I have mixed feelings about Wowee Zowee.  It has never had the same impact on me as other Pavement albums.  The band always seemed to be at their best when they took an assortment of intriguing influences and put their own indelible stamp of personality on the results.   But this album…just doesn’t seem to come together as much as the best ones (Slanted & Enchanted, Brighten the Corners).  Scott Kannberg has suggested this album was a little rushed, and might have been different if the band had more time to work on it.  That seems like a compelling description.  Regardless, this one comes across as one of those mid-career rock albums from a band that has had some success but maybe isn’t ready to just settle on an established formula.  So the result is an eclectic bricolage, with various styles and influences on display (comparisons being The Mothers of Invention‘s Freak Out!, The Beatles‘ White Album, Stevie Wonder‘s Songs in the Key of Life, The Clash‘s London Calling, etc.).  While the raw materials are certainly here, and there is a great song (“Rattled By the Rush”) and a few more that are really good (“My Best Friend’s Arm,” “Grave Architecture”), overall the band fails to make the best of it.  If you like this, you’re probably the type to look past the faults to its assorted charms, and, if you don’t like it, you probably can’t avoid getting hung up on the album’s faults.  I fall more in the latter camp.