On Friday, Sonic Youth released a five song EP of unreleased material from the last ten years of their career. I'm listening to it for the first time today and I am consuming raw fuel. There is no way that most people I know would consider the raw noise that is "Social Static" to be enjoyable, but this makes sense to me. I hear harmonies reconciling before a tragic break-up that seems so familiar.
When I was in high school, Sonic Youth's noise felt like heaven to me. I somehow made sense of what I heard first on Daydream Nation, and I devoured their back catalog by buying everything I could from the Record Exchange, both in Lynchburg and in Blacksburg.
Sitting here at my kitchen work table, hearing this, it's like hearing a lifeline from a long ago past that taught me it was okay to like things that were way outside the mainstream. I wanted to live my life my way, which included accepting chaotic music as a way to calm my chaotic mind.
Hearing "new" Sonic Youth at 48, with the wind blowing through my kitchen window, I feel renewed. At 18, I heard this kind of noise and understood it and this band has helped me immeasurably in a career trying to sift through a chaotic world to try to bring order.
Sonic Youth will never be for everyone, but I suspect there are many like me whose lives were affected so much by their approach to music.
Gosh.
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