Sonic Youth - Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star (1994)

This record is most impressive for its sound - the EQ is just scrumptious. Recording engineers and musicians should take a listen (past the lo-fi, muted acoustics of the first song, the atypical "Winner's Blues"). It's the best-recorded SY album yet, but strangely, instead of using this kind of technical prowess to record the kind of sprawling 7-minute+ epics with multilayered noise breakdowns which grace other albums such as Daydream Nation, Goo, and Washing Machine, the songs here are simple, straightforward, mostly three-minute vamps of a kind not found in their catalog since, oh, Confusion Is Sex, if one really needed a comparison. EJSTANS is a real curveball - a major departure from the flamboyant extroversion of Dirty. A lot of Kim Gordon's songs here have a kind of glistening resonance that is wonderful to behold - viz. "Bull In The Heather", "Skink", "Doctor's Orders", and particularly "Sweet Shine". Thurston takes command of the two-chord skronkers, which often have an abstract beauty of their own, although I could do without the grating "Androgynous Mind."

You've got to admire the kind of self-assuredness that would enable this band to record an album as aggressively unconventional as this, regardless of major label expectations, and after their ascendancy into the new practically-mainstream "Alternative" genre (that absurdity of absurdities) fostered by Nirvana in the early 90's. Speaking of which, producer Butch Vig seems to be something of a fifth wheel here - you can hear that for all intents and purposes, this is a self-produced album. I read in an interview that on occasion while recording, he'd ask for a second take on a song, and they'd simply refuse. The band are in complete command of their craft here, and they need no one but themselves to help them prove it. Uncompromising and dedicated to the last, Sonic Youth are truly a band without peers.