Saturday, April 26, 2008
The Spin The Spin: Sonic Youth & Leslie Keffer @ City Hall
Posted by The Spin on Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 5:10 PM
Last night, The Spin descended upon City Hall to find a long line snaking around the building, and the crowd was a mixed bag of regular people and old people. Some of the regular, non-old people looked too young to have heard anything before Sonic Youth's most recent record, 2006's Rather Ripped. But that wasn't a handicap, as the band's set focused largely on that record. But first, they'd have to wait through opener Leslie Keffer's squall of feedback, static and noise, and the crowd seemed sharply divided.
When Keffer took the stage with a female accomplice at 9:20 p.m. and kick-started a looped sample of a dance beat with pre-recorded ethereal female vox, the crowd cheered. For six minutes, the beat held steady while Keffer & Co. danced and coaxed a mounting sea of feedback from their table o' gear. The second song was a dissonant cricket orchestra of chirps, static-y ebbs and undulations.
Noise aficionados were surely delighted, but the rest of us were growing impatient for even a hint of a melody. Or, you know, structure of some kind. "Horrible!" shouted one showgoer lingering by the bathroom, "Seriously, I'm just annoyed at this point. I'm old, but I'm not THAT old! I didn't pay to see this!"
He wasn't alone. Random boos and shouts of "Please stop!" permeated the applause and cheers after every song. Keffer's experimental noise sculptures weren't inherently bad--they just belonged in a more intimate environment, with people who didn't come to hear "Dirty Boots."
We never would hear most of those treasured chestnuts, incidentally. After Keffer's 20 minute set ended in an R. Kelly dance-off with crowd participation, Sonic Youth eventually took the stage (with former Pavement bassist Mark Ibold) to open with "Incinerate," one of Rather Ripped's more toe-tappable numbers, and continued with a set that featured easily half of that album, with few dips into their extensive back catalog.
"Reena," Rather Ripped's opening track, followed, and then came "The World Looks Red," off Confusion is Sex.
Lee Ranaldo took the mic for Goo's "Mote," and later, to our delight, Daydream Nation's "Hey Joni."
The band looked and played as energetically as any of your cherubic up-and-coming indie rockers, so save your "Sonic Old" jokes for at least another decade. Kim Gordon danced like a fan even as she sang, and Thurston Moore apparently does not age, or lose his boyish awe.
At one point, he stopped the show to call attention to an audience members long hair. "What kind of shampoo do you use?" he asked with apparently genuine interest. "That's awesome. Long hair is so punk rock now. Isn't that weird?"
He later quipped that he was "half a century old" and had never had hair that long. Yeah, half a century old, and he still looks like he could be playing with JEFF in your basement this weekend.
Sonic Youth obviously don't think of themselves as a greatest-hits lounge act—their steady success has given them license to lean heavily on their most recent material with every tour. But they did break out "Bull in the Heather" off Experimental Jet Set, and what we could have sworn was the opening to "Teenage Riot" turned out to be Daydream Nation's " 'Cross the Breeze."
An encore brought Dirty's* "Drunken Butterfly," and a second encore brought "100%" from that same album. All in all, they owned the night, and even with a setlist light on nostalgia, the band proved you can still have a teenage riot at any age. And we totally bought a T-shirt.
*The original post incorrectly listed the song "Drunken Butterfly" as appearing on the album Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star. It appears on Dirty.
Comments (14)
Showing 1-14 of 14
annoyed by the opener for sonic youth for not being structured and melodic enough
seriously?
most of their catalogue is based on proving the arbitrary and subjective lines between melody/ambience srtucture/choas
the record washing machine alone has about 30 mins of formless noise woven through out.
like
dislike
jesus this is sonic youth! theyre like the beatles of indie rock! and noise is not just noise. theres a big difference in something captivating and trance inducing and racket for the sake of racket. for the record it would be tough to open for this band. ok now destroy me for the beatles comment. (but dont even think about throwing the pixies in there you hip crapheads)
Any set list that includes Drunken Butterfly, 100%, Bull in the Heather, Mote, Cross the Breeze, The World Looks Red, and Hey Joni is pretty solid in my book.
that show sounds dope- it is definitely more solid than exams(in a different state- totally would have made it otherwise). wish i could have been there. dirty really changed the trajectory of my musical taste in a great way, and murray street is one of the most underrated albums ever. ugh- wish i didnt miss this.
Hahaha,
Fucking old hipsters - I sure wish I could have invited them to Springwater to see To Live and Shave in LA way back in last years time.
They could have stood next to my 51 year old self and put their fingers in their wussy ears.
Mind you, I had no idea that was Leslie playing for that show. You learn, you learn.
I just noticed that this post is unattributed, just "the spin". How nice.
Did they play anything off 'Washing Machine' or 'Murray Street'?
How about 'The Trilogy' off Daydream?
I thought both bands were great. Mrs.'s Keffer and Martino totally extended their new jams and approached them in a different way than the past couple of times I've seen them. I think the negative crowd reaction had to happen - it's just a shame there's not more open-mindedness about different forms and approaches sometimes. I mean it was dance music before it was noise to me. I thought Valerie Martino's bass lines added a nice dub injection, Keffer's repetitive aural collage was constantly evolving, and most importantly IT LOOKED LIKE THEY WERE HAVING FUN.
The sound that night was actually the best I've ever heard at City Hall, and Sonic Youth blew my mind, even though I would've liked to have heard more extended jams. But yeah, they played Hey Joni, so that's enough to make me happy.
There's a fine line between noise as a musical or artistic endeavour, and noise that just simply irritates the ears and is literally painful to listen to. Most of Leslie's set was the latter. I'm pretty open-minded about these things, but I have to draw the line somewhere. It's all subjective of course, if you're into pain then more power to ya... but I don't like pain, and most of her stuff was painful to me.
while noise may be better suited for house shows and smaller venues. i love how this show has everybody talking. and a giant KUDOS! to sonic youth for shaking things up.
I think it's interesting how T.M. seems to use the word "punk" a lot--in interviews, articles and on stage banter...maybe it's because he's one of the only people in the world who could call something punk and not have ten people stand up and say, "that's not punk, THIS is punk" or "that's not punk, punk's dead." It's kind of precious. Like he's reclaiming the word, using the word and in the process, both redefining what punk is/was and letting people know that punk rock has evolved--that so much of the music now that's been sub divided and re-classified into tiny, niche genres still falls under the umbrella of punk rock because it is the legacy of punk rock. Punk's been a dirty word for decades now, and the jury has been out, but I think it's safe to say that the verdict is in. Apparently punk's not dead. I mean, he'd know, right?
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