Sonic Youth released by Starbucks? Something just doesn’t sit right with that one, as though the words just aren’t supposed to fit together, like ‘intelligent racist’ or something. However, you read it right - this is an album originally commissioned by Starbucks featuring Sonic Youth’s music. However, I guess the discussion and meaning of that is another article in itself.
This album actually did the rounds a couple of years ago for Record Store Day and it was of course available in all good Starbucks outlets, but it seems now it’s getting a proper release, more as an auditory accompaniment to the DVD release of 1991: The Year Punk Broke than anything. It’s a fitting release, being a compilation of SY’s work. The premise is pretty simple, a bunch of bands and generally hip people pick their favourite SY tracks and thus we have an album. The contributors include: Beck, Radiohead, The Flaming Lips, Gus Van Sant, Flea and even stand up comic David Cross. The booklet includes a brief insight and quote from each band as to why they picked the song, some are more insightful than others, Flea’s take on ‘Rain On Tin’ is simply “Dude, it’s fucking epic!”. The songs also include a brief history of their inception, meaning and general anecdotal musings which tend to be more insightful. 'World Looks Red', for example is actually just left over lyrics given to the band by Swans’ Michael Gira, as SY were in need of some. ‘Express Way To Yr Skull’ was alternately called ‘The Crucifixion of Sean Penn’ and ‘Madonna, Sean and Me’ is a nice little nugget.
This is a difficult album to review, it’s not an album of new material (except one song) and it’s not even a body of work selected by the artist itself, so they really shouldn’t even be judged on it’s output. It’s simply other people’s favourite SY songs. Even at that, am I supposed to scrutinise people’s opinions? And question whether their opinion on having a favourite song is indeed, right, or good? It’s a journalistic grey area. A basic, fundamental question is of course: is it any good? Well, of course it’s good, it’s essentially a greatest hits SY record. Any album that has a three-song run of '100%', 'Sugar Kane' and 'Kool Thing' is going to be great.
The tracklist varies through the bands career, dipping back as early as 1983’s Confusion Is Sex and extending to the more recent Sonic Nurse, from 2004. In between, we cover a variety of records, with Goo racking up the highest hits (three in total). It makes for an eclectic take on an even more eclectic band - SY’s take on The Carpenters ‘Superstar’, lifted from a 1994 tribute album, is a nice surprise and is in fact picked by Diablo Cody, the writer behind Juno (the film itself mentioning this song).
This format somehow allows the songs to sit alongside one another without the usual connotations associated with Greatest Hits records and therefore it gives you a sense of freedom and playful, reckless abandonment when it comes to absorbing the songs in this manner. Essentially, because there is nothing to judge, nobody to point the finger at, and no real purpose or even intention to releasing this record, it makes listening to it just a blast.
The only new material on the record, which SY wrote for this album, is closer ‘Slow Revolution’, a reserved kraut-jam that doesn’t sound too different from the avenues Deerhunter have walked down of recent years, especially as the reverb laden vocals add a haunting and ethereal sense of atmosphere. It’s a slow, spiralling song that broods and manifests itself internally, constantly hitting towards an inevitable explosion, but the lid remains sealed and it’s all the better for it. It lacks the hooks, blasts and ferocity of the other albums' picks, but it works for that reason; the preceding songs have already displayed the band’s seamless ability to not just play guitars but own them. This closer is a wonderful, atmospheric, hazy soundscape that allows one to sit in contemplation at the majesty of the songs that have just been on offer.
With this being the first proper collection of SY songs all in one place and spanning over twenty years in sixteen tracks, it really is an eye opening experience to what they have achieved in their career and a most worthy accompaniment to look back to 1991 and see just how far they’ve come.