ALBUM REACTION: Sonic Youth - Washing Machine

[@AlexHaitz]

More SONIC YOUTH Reactions: Bad Moon Rising: kzbin.info/www/bejne/oJLbqqxtgciCY7M EVOL: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a6HdpISDZ5xrY7s Sister: kzbin.info/www/bejne/eJPJaIp5qaqIr6c Daydream Nation: kzbin.info/www/bejne/o4XKfamgfqqqqJo Goo: kzbin.info/www/bejne/l4PFhppmmdx2bZo Dirty: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rnWwqp96a5eWqbs Murray Street: kzbin.info/www/bejne/boKXoa1reqall5o Sonic Nurse: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bZ-QgKqimdiDr9k Superstar (Carpenters cover): kzbin.info/www/bejne/inqtqnurbd6cfac The Burning Spear: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hJSQZWiOm9WZgpY

[@Onche518]

Diamond Sea is the best Sonic Youth song for me

[@curseleisure5507]

This is a criminally underrated SY album

[@filmfredrik]

You’ll like this more on repeat listens. SY always have a lot of ideas in their songs. Every song is like its own universe. The noise feedback bridge in Becuz is probably my favorite moment on this record. Sounds hauntingly sad somehow.

[@mattjohn4731]

yeah hauntingly sad, that describes one of their key elements.

[@eltambore]

The Diamond Sea is the highlight of this album (for myself, anyway). It’s gotta be one of their most mesmerizing and weirdly beautiful songs.

[@mattjohn4731]

Trouble Girl has grown on me over the yeas and now I think it's amazing, and that includes the video which shows a somber Kim G and Kim D and shots of a little girl dressed as an alien in a spooky future. Trouble Girl quotes the Shangri-La's "very, very close". I also like Panty Lies. I like all their stuff. But Kim is the most intense and emotional singer of SY, by far in my opinion

[@mattjohn4731]

Also Kim Gordon has been doing solo songs that are quite intense too!

[@Malady]

Can't wait until you start the Pixies albums.

[@cpottervlog8122]

I think No Queen Blues is my favorite song on this one

[@bigneon_glitter]

You'll want to check out the "Little Trouble Girl" video - one of the seminal clips of 1995. Leave it to the Kims to embrace the Mod-revival moment. Arriving in the year of Oasis & the slow demise of the Grunge scene post-Kurt, _Washing Machine_ was a fairly out of step offering & middling effort by SY's standards. A few years prior, they were pioneers - by '95, trends were in seachange & SY were suddenly traditionalists. But the irony of _WS_ is that - for a brief, hot minute - the edited "Diamond Sea" became SY's biggest mainstream radio hit, serving as a fitting career coda for a band that reached the top of the mountain after a decade-long climb but was now approaching the other side of it.

[@my_stash]

those long noisy outros and bridge somewhat grows on you.. and sometimes when you are in a certain mood, you feel drawn to it.. for me it was always cannabis that gets me in the zone with sonic youth..

[@won8100]

off topic, it would be interesting to hear your opinion on Muse's Origin of Symmetry / Absolution

[@markrodeo420]

Probably would have told you to skip this one. The stuff after it just so much more inspired. The thing you said about wondering why there songs have the long instrumental parts is intersecting to me. I’ve never really thought about it. I mean I’ve always looked at SY’s lyrics as a fairly ornamental thing, and never concerned myself with the meaning of any of it. It’s the music that’s the main focus. But that’s an interesting question in itself, why keep a song going after you’ve communicated the basic idea of it? What justifies a 19 minute drone? Does it need a conceptual underpinning or can it just stand as abstraction? I think it was Stravinsky that said that music can have no meaning, that it it pure abstraction. If approached that way then answering “why” might be hard to do in concrete terms. It’s like asking Jackson Pollock what the point of the last 3 layers of paint he put on a piece was. It’s a very hard thing to pin down. The piece wasn’t done, and then it was.

[@luth7050]

man those rods are so expensive

[@randyguess3124]

This makes me think, ill be happy to never listen to the band again. When you mentioned the youth pastor jokingly was like, I'll take Sunday youth service over any of this stuff ever again.

[@justaguy1451]

This album is meh and Sonic Youth is a very overrated band.

[@alvinsekkingstad]

I disagree

[@mtr801]

I also disagree

[@HO-yc3pv]

Hard disagree. I'd actually argue they are still underrated in some sense.

[@justaguy1451]

I stand by my overrated remark, but I find their drummer pretty good, if thats any consolation.

[@dylandenney3980]

Definitely not overrated. People have different tastes.