Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped and the art of time travel
By NICK TAVARES
STATIC and FEEDBACK Editor
The summer of 2006 was, for the time, unusually hot. There was not a lot of rain, and by the time July hit, the heat was blanketing the country. But my primary sense memory, vivid and vague all at once, is of the sun burning through the windshield of my 1998 Nissan, with the opening notes of "Reena" are blaring out of my speakers.
Rather Ripped, Sonic Youth's penultimate studio record, arrived in June 2006, right in time for me to be traveling all around the northeast in search of shows when I wasn't already driving miles up and down New England for work. I had some good new stuff for the car that year, with Pearl Jam's self-titled album appearing the month before and Tom Petty's Highway Companion a month later. But more than anything, Rather Ripped seems to send me right back to that moment more than any other record.
It's simultaneously unreal and wholly believable that 18 years have elapsed between now and then. But the music, and specifically this record and this band, seem almost frozen in time. If a random track from Rather Ripped appears, it does so with the supreme confidence of knowing that it will sound as fresh and relevant and welcome as it did when it first appeared.
And when it first appeared, it was playing non-stop. I bought the LP and the CD and still made a car-specific CD copy, so that it would always have a home in the CD visor wallet that was so ubiquitous in a music-lover's car circa the early 2000s. It was slinky and sinewy and mysterious and familiar, all these contradictions rolled into one, sounding new and vital while also sounding as if it had always existed.
My impression at the time was that it was the next step in the direction that began with Murray Street and continued with Sonic Nurse, where the experimental noise was honed in the pursuit of a more pop focus. Not that this was going to get anywhere near the radio in 2006, but the song structure and dynamics were the focus, with the guitar freakouts contained to brief microbursts within the songs. Distortion took a back seat to clarity, where Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo could weave their guitars in their typically discordant path. And after a few years with Jim O'Rourke in the band, this was their first full effort as a quartet since 1998's A Thousand Leaves. It makes sense that they stripped down and refocused the music in that circumstance.
Not that the signature, building freak-out that made Sonic Youth such a unique entity isn't present. The gentle guitar lines that intertwine on Kim Gordon's "Turquoise Boy" give way in its midsection to an old-fashioned build-up of noise that eventually slides gently back into the main theme. It's loud, uncomfortable and thrilling before settling into its easy-yet-inventive pop rhythms.
That kind of gas-pedal intensity builds to a head on "Pink Steam," with a lyrical story I still can't quite pin down but leaves me uncomfortable all the same. The instrumental builds and gathers tension until Moore stops by to run you over. It's a masterclass in sinister storytelling, underpinned by the band's angular attack that has yet to be duplicated. That track leads into the finale, "Or," where that tension simmers down to a low boil, the monotonous travelogue of a working band set to the aural equivalent of rolling through the same highways and same rest stops and same clubs across the country night after night. And its final "words" sends the listener right back to the opening "Reena," coming home again as Gordon kicks off the proceedings.
I have a hard time recognizing myself in this decades-old time frame. I know all the stories, but almost in the way I would if I'd read about them or heard them in exhausting detail, first hand. That person's actual life feels miles from where I am now. But when the music comes on, that is as vivid as if it had been released two weeks ago. The sights and smells and just the feel of the air immediately rush back. For the 50 or so minutes of this record, it might as well be 2006. Given all that happened to Sonic Youth and their interpersonal relationships in the coming years, I wonder if it's a similar feeling for the bandmembers, too.
But in the spirit of reminiscence, I tracked down this video of their From The Basement set, where three tunes from Rather Ripped sit perfectly alongside two from Daydream Nation.
Daydream Nation has since gone on to be hailed as their signature record, an unquestioned classic to the point that it's earned a home in the Library of Congress. I take no issue with that album getting its deserved acclaim, of course. Go give that a listen if it's been a while. But give Rather Ripped another spin, too. The Sonic Youth catalog is incredibly deep, with classics strewn about from their earliest days to the very end. Rather Ripped was released a lifetime ago, but lives in the present as well as it did the past. It travels, so to speak.
July 31, 2024
Email Nick Tavares at nick@staticandfeedback.com