Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth – Sonic Nurse (2004/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:00:40 minutes | 2,39 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Geffen

Picking up where Murray Street’s languid experimentalism left off, Sonic Youth’s somewhat awkwardly named Sonic Nurse shows that the band still sounds revitalized, and may have even tapped into a more fruitful creative streak than they did on their previous album. Anyone who has stuck with Sonic Youth this long knows more or less what to expect from them, but the group still has the potential to surprise; one of Sonic Nurse’s biggest surprises is the return of Kim Gordon. She had a relatively limited presence on NYC Ghosts & Flowers and Murray Street, but she’s back in a big way on this album, contributing four tracks; not coincidentally, Gordon’s songs are among the strongest on the album. “Pattern Recognition” gets Sonic Nurse off to a strong start and ranks among her best rock songs, falling somewhere between “Kool Thing” and “Bull in the Heather” in its icy-hot appeal. Her quieter songs have just as much impact: “Dude Ranch Nurse” boasts an oddly timeless guitar lick and lyrics (“Let me ride you till you fall/Let’s pretend that there’s nothing at all”) that blur the line between alluring and nihilistic. “I Love You Golden Blue” is another standout, a beautiful but bleak ballad with ghostly vocals that recall Nico at her most fragile. Of course, the rest of the band finds moments to shine: Thurston Moore’s “Dripping Dream” begins as absurdist, angular rock (although he still has the ability to make phrases like “We’ve been searching for the cream dream wax” sound like the coolest thing ever) and stretches out into a beautiful epic, with the interplay of feedback and guitar lines giving it a comet-tail majesty. “Paper Cup Exit,” the requisite Lee Ranaldo track, has a sharper-edged mix of noise and melody than most of Sonic Nurse. Another of the album’s surprises is how much of its inspiration seems to come from the band’s late-’80s/early-’90s material. It’s not just that the band slams George W. Bush on the mellow protest song “Peace Attack,” just as Dirty’s “Youth Against Fascism” railed against the first President Bush, or that they peer into the void of pop culture on “Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream” as they did on Goo’s Karen Carpenter tribute, “Tunic.” On songs like “New Hampshire” — which could pass for a lost track from Daydream Nation — Sonic Youth actually sound younger and more enthusiastic than they have in a few albums. All told, this album is probably the band’s best balance of pop melodies and avant-leaning structures since Washing Machine; even if it doesn’t rank among their most ambitious work, Sonic Nurse sounds like the kind of album Sonic Youth should be making at this point in their career. –AllMusic Review by Heather Phares

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Sonic Youth – Rather Ripped (2006/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 51:49 minutes | 2,06 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Geffen

Rather Ripped contains some of Sonic Youth’s most poppy and accessible songs, co-produced by John Agnello working with the band for the first time. The 2006 release marked the end of Sonic Youth’s nine-album run on Geffen Records as well as the departure of guitarist and producer Jim O’Rourke, who joined the group in 1999.

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Sonic Youth – NYC Ghosts & Flowers (2000/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 42:43 minutes | 1,68 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Geffen

NYC Ghosts & Flowers is the 11th studio album by American noise rock/alternative rock band Sonic Youth. It was released on May 16, 2000 by record label DGC. The album was very experimental and can be considered as a reaction to the theft of their instruments in July 1999, in which many irreplaceable guitars and effects pedals were stolen. This is also the first album since Bad Moon Rising in which Sonic Youth used John Cage-like prepared guitar, for example using a bicycle horn between the strings on Lightnin, a lime between the strings and the first pickup and a file inserted over the neck pickup on Small Flowers Crack Concrete and a drum stick between the strings in Free City Rhymes.

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Sonic Youth – Murray Street (2002/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 45:41 minutes | 1,76 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Geffen

Considered one of the band’s best albums, Sonic Youth’s 2002 release Murray Street is named for the location of the group’s studio in New York City, only two blocks from the World Trade Center. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 occurred during the writing and recording of this album, which therefore reflects the turmoil and uncertainty of the times. Murray Street also marks the beginning of Grammy-winning producer and guitarist Jim O’Rourke’s six year stint as a member of Sonic Youth.

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Sonic Youth – Live in Torino 1987 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 58:26 minutes | 686 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sonic Youth

“Our Sister lp was released on June 1st and by June 4th we were on tour and somehow joined by hero Iggy Pop for our London Town & Country encore. This show a few weeks later, was recorded nearly halfway through our Summer tour of Europe on June 21, 1987 and our only Italian concert of 1987’s journey at Big Club.. Italy would grow to be one of our favorite places to visit and it still is to this day.”

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Sonic Youth – Live In Moscow 1989 (2019)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:05:50 minutes | 796 MB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth recorded live at Orlyonok Concert Hall, Moscow, April 12-13, 1989.

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Sonic Youth – Live in Denver 1986 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 37:39 minutes | 440 MB | Genre: Alternative Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © SY recordings

An all-ager-rager in Denver; I am so glad this one is up cuz my late ’80s live-tape-swapping-obsessive self has always been hopped up about this 1986 gig. It was right off a Europe run and a week later flat-splat into a summer Evol USA tour, SY were kicking around in a hot van gigging everywhere, coast to coast and back with the likes of Saccharine Trust and Dinosaur. It’s well documented in Lee journals and Thurston’s epic/hilarious Forced Exposure tour diary, the latter of which has a great shotgun-seat-sourced pic of T at the wheel as the van left the Lincoln Tunnel behind, off to finally join the trail their newfound SST brothers and sisters were also carving out town to town. Seems like a lot of those tour setlists understandably hit heavy on Evol tracks, even the previous year’s Bad Moon Rising tunes took a backseat (“Death Valley ’69” reportedly only played once this whole tour). But the Denver kids at the Turnverein (German Castle?) got the band midtour in ferocious form though with only five new tunes, six if you count the later-released “White Kross”. The mix on this is perfectly hot-board, guitars skull-split left and right, drums sounding amazing, the whole band almost blurry and slo-mo at times. Very much woozin it up through an especially-psychedelic middle stretch of “Death To Our Friends”/”I Love Her All the Time”/”Flower”/”Green Light” that must have melted stoner kids’ brains. You lose sense of which guitar is which as it all congeals into a big trippy gelatinous pile. Then a “Brother James”/”Kill Yr Idols” one-two punch that sounds like the rawest craziest versions I’ve heard, and finally “Expressway” taking one last peak then cooling it down (then my tape cut off). No knowledge of openers Death Valley Girls, Cage of Reason and Happy Girls, but lots of inspired stuff was in place in Denver’s early ’80s: Tom Headbanger gigs, Bum Kon, The Frantix, pre-SF Jello. Imagine this to have been a cool event for sure. Blasted this tape a lot in the car and it had a Feelies ’86 gig on the other side, so it was especially great to see them together on a bill later in 2008 at Battery Park. Someone I traded with and got this tape from made me a pink tie-dye J-card too which was nice icing on the cake! Hope you like this loud and large set like I do.

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Sonic Youth – Live In Bremen 1991 (2020)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:06:48 minutes | 435 MB | Genre: Alternative Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sonic Youth

“Live in Bremen was recorded at the Aladin Music Hall on August 27 1991, just halfway through the 12 day European tour that would later become immortalized in The Year Punk Broke documentary directed by our friend Dave Markey. In Bremen we returned to the familiar – a smaller-sized indoor venue – after playing to gargantuan, surreal-sized audiences at the Reading Festival and Pukkelpop. The Aladin had opened in 1977 and had hosted bands such as Golden Earring, Foghat and Blue Öyster Cult, but on this night Sonic Youth, Gumball and special guests Nirvana were on the bill. Two different bootleg SY records were released from this concert; The Mira Tapes, sourced from an audience recording and Live In Bremen, a semi-official bootleg picture disc with a Yoo-Hoo (a NJ-local chocolate beverage drink) bottle cap – supplied by the band – as the cover star. This concert was also the source for some of the audio used for The Year Punk Broke film score and it’s subsequent short (This Is Known As) The Blues Scale. Now for the first time, and from our own audio source, the entire Sonic Youth in Bremen set (minus encore) is presented here (complete w/a tape-flip during I Love Her All The Time).”

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Sonic Youth – A Thousand Leaves (1998/2016)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 01:14:22 minutes | 2,82 GB | Genre: Alternative Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Geffen

Truth be told, the grunge era never quite fit Sonic Youth. They may have been at the peak of their popularity, but they had traded their experimentalism for sheer, bracing noise. It may have sounded good, but ultimately Dirty didn’t have the cerebral impact of Sister, largely because it was tied to an admittedly effective backbeat. Beginning with Washing Machine, Sonic Youth returned to more adventurous territory, and in 1997, they released a series of EPs that illustrated their bond with such post-rock groups as Tortoise and Gastr del Sol. Those EPs, as well as the epic Washing Machine closer, “The Diamond Sea,” provide the foundation for A Thousand Leaves, the band’s most challenging and satisfying record in years. The blasts of dissonance that characterized their SST masterworks have been replaced, by and large, by winding, intricate improvisations. There’s a surprising warmth to the subdued guitars of Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, and Kim Gordon, which keeps the lengthy songs captivating. Both Moore and Ranaldo concentrate on quiet material, which almost makes Gordon’s noisy politicized rants sound a little out of place, but her best moments (“French Tickler,” “Heather Angel”) have unsettling, unpredictable twists and turns that greatly contribute to the success of A Thousand Leaves. It may be their most cerebral album in ages, but that only makes it all the more engaging.

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Sonic Youth – Live In Austin 1995 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 01:16:34 minutes | 975 MB | Genre: Alternative Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Sonic Youth Archive

The discography of American rock band Sonic Youth comprises 15 studio albums, seven extended plays, three compilation albums, seven video releases, 21 singles, 46 music videos, ten releases in the Sonic Youth Recordings series, eight official bootlegs, and contributions to 16 soundtracks and other compilations.

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Sonic Youth – Live In Kyiv, Ukraine 1989 (2022)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/48 kHz | Time – 47:13 minutes | 528 MBGenre: Alternative Rock, Noise Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Digital Booklet, Front Cover | © Sonic Youth Archive

Exactly 33 years ago Thursday, on April 14, 1989, Sonic Youth staged a concert in Kyiv, Ukraine, one of the last Western acts to play in the then-Soviet city prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the U.S.S.R. Amid the current Russian invasion, the pioneering band has unearthed a partial recording of that Kyiv gig to raise money for humanitarian efforts…
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