Metro Pulse/Gamut/Sonic Youth

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Who:
Sonic Youth with Stereolab

When:
Thursday, June 22 at 8 p.m.

Where:
Tennessee Theatre

Tickets are $23 and available at Tickets Unlimited Outlets or 656-4444

Dancing About Architecture

Stereolab is, without a doubt, one of the most innovative bands in the pop marketplace today. The English band is oftentimes described as space age bachelor pad music—and, at one time, that description may have even been applicable. But the band has evolved greatly in the decade or so since its inception.

The very personification of postmodernism, Stereolab combines organic and electronic sounds with new and not so new technology, creating a genre-twisting musical pastiche that is by no means inhuman or ordinary. True to form, you can never even be sure what language the band will choose to sing in.

No description of the band could ever be adequate, but here we go: It's as if Astrud Gilberto stepped in to perform lead vocals on the Switched on Bach recording sessions, and the entire thing was remixed by supercomputers to create pleasant background Muzak for the Home Shopping Network, circa 2100 A.D.

Stereolab's latest opus, Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night (Elektra), combines warm female vocals with an amalgam of samples, Moog synthesizers, harpsichords, and good old drum and bass to present what is perhaps their best album yet. The 15 tracks on the CD cover too much stylistic territory to mention—so let's just say that the band has continued its evolution beyond the three minute attention span of standard pop. Cobra and Phases hints at influences of jazz, South American sounds, and even minimalism, all the while lulling the listener into a pleasant, womblike state.

All of Stereolab's albums are digitally perfect marvels of studio wizardry. Rather than using the studio to record sounds, it's as if the band uses the studio as an instrument on its own. So it will be interesting to see how the group can recreate their compositions live on stage, or if they'll even try to do that. The burning question is, instruments or computers? And somehow I think Stereolab will feature prodigious use of both, with plenty of surprises to boot.

—J.S.

Sonic Youth pushes the boundaries of rock even though they are truly Youth no more.

by John Sewell

When describing Sonic Youth, it's virtually impossible to avoid using terms like influential, genre-shattering, and über hip. In an auspicious career, the band has managed to achieve the unthinkable: occupying the gaping chasm left in the absence of the archetypal New York art rock band, The Velvet Underground. Now the band has moved beyond the highest tier of the rock 'n' roll hierarchy, joining the likes of William S. Burroughs, Lou Reed, Jim Carroll, Allen Ginsburg, Robert Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, and others among the ranks of the quintessential New York bohemians. You just can't get any cooler than Sonic Youth.

But Sonic Youth didn't get to be so cool just by hanging around the right people and wearing sunglasses after dark. They earned their universally respected status by creating a new vocabulary of sound that has redefined modern music. The band got where it is today because of a unity of focus and the ability to perform musical experiments that yielded tangible and listenable results. More than merely theorists, the group creates jarring, symphonic musical pieces that still have a pop sensibility and rock out, man. Sonic Youth's simultaneous appeal to the mind and the body is a rare and beautiful thing.

On board Sonic Youth's magical mystery tour bus for around 16 years, drummer Steve Shelley says that the band's iconic status is not usually taken into consideration on a day-to-day basis. "I don't think we really think about that very much," says Shelley. "We're respected but we're still kept in our place, you know? We're not that respected. We're still an underground band after 19 years or something."

Actually, the band has deftly straddled the fence between the underground and the mainstream by releasing a stream of popular, critically praised, yet challenging, albums. At present, the band releases albums on its own imprint (the SYR label) and releases a slightly more pop-savvy offering every few years on major label Geffen Records. Shelley says that though the Geffen albums are a little less rough-hewn than the SYR releases, there is little difference in the creative process with either label.

Sonic Youth's last release, Goodbye 20th Century (SYR) was a tip of the hat to a number of contemporary avant garde composers that had influenced the band. The album was adventurous, even by Sonic standards. On Goodbye, the group paid homage to their predecessors like John Cage and Steve Reich by playing their compositions in the inimitable Sonic Youth style. The album may have been a bit too far off the mark for fans hoping for the rock sound of SY hits like "Cool Thing" and "Teenage Riot."

But Sonic Youth refuse to dumb down for anyone, always going out on a limb to maintain their high artistic standards. "Maybe people shouldn't try to digest it [the music on Goodbye] too quickly," says Shelley. "I mean, not everything is made for the exact same purpose. I was more surprised at how accessible that music actually is. And, with just a little bit of research into what was actually going on in that album, I think the listening rewards are there. I think it would have helped if we'd have been able to print the scores (musical notation) in the package. The pieces aren't really hard to comprehend at all.

"We got feedback from quite a few of the composers from that record and they were actually quite excited about it," Shelley continues. "Yoko Ono, Christian Wolff, Pauline Oliveros, and Takehisa Kosugi [who actually participated in the recording session]—they were actually all kind of excited to be to be exposed to a somewhat mainstream kind of audience through this project."

The new Sonic Youth LP, NYC Ghosts & Flowers, is something of a return to a more traditional motif for the group—but they were never three chord wonders in the first place.

"I wouldn't say it is any more commercially accessible," says Shelley. "There's some shorter pieces on this one, but it's still not typical songwriting with typical structures. This is not like the older stuff with more of a verse/chorus/verse structure.

"We refine the stuff that comes out on Geffen a little bit more," Shelley continues. "The stuff that we put out on our own has rougher edges, perhaps. Our self-released stuff is more like post cards or sketches from the recording process. But Geffen never tries to influence us to change our sound. They never ask us to try to make a hit single or anything like that."

Last year fickle fate dealt the band a bum hand when a truck full of its equipment was stolen from a hotel parking lot after a performance in California. Above and beyond the sheer cost of the instruments, the theft was especially tragic because several of SY's songs were based on oddly-rigged, hard-to-find guitars that were impossible to replace. So when the band began working on NYC Ghosts, they were using all new gear.

"It wasn't really a challenge at all to go on without our old equipment," says Shelley. "Either you deal with it and move on or you don't deal with it. It definitely did affect the new album because we had a different set of resources for creating different sounds and tones and textures. Although we're still the same four people contributing musically, we had different tools to express ourselves. I don't think it really made it any more difficult—it just happened."

The equipment theft will surely affect the band's reproduction of old songs in its live repertoire, though. "I think it's definitely true that there are some songs that won't sound the same if we tried to play them live, because we're missing certain guitars—not necessarily expensive guitars, but just certain modified guitars."

For Sonic Youth, each concert is a new exploration and even the band members can't say for sure exactly where their aural experimentation will take them. The band might play some old material, but don't expect a note-for-note rendition of past hits played by rote. "It really just kind of depends on the night," says Shelley. "We do play songs with singing and things like that. We still play some old material when we feel like it. It's our job to play music, not to rehash all the things that have happened in the past. Sometimes it's good to revisit old songs, but we're interested in creating new things for ourselves. So you can never be sure exactly what we'll do."

For the Knoxville show (and the current tour), SY will be abetted onstage by longtime friend and collaborator Jim O'Rourke. "Jim is our friend and he helped produce the latest record," explains Shelley. "Musically, Jim's status is the same as any of the other musicians on stage. He'll be there playing with us and that includes quite a lot of responsibility. We're certainly not telling him exactly what to play or anything like that. We'll just all be creating music together. He is by no means a sideman."

Now that rock 'n' roll is nearing its 50th birthday as an established genre, it seems that perhaps the form has mutated as far as possible. And Sonic Youth is one of the key bands that has speeded this evolutionary process, perhaps to (or even beyond) its limit. So it's really no surprise when Shelley says he's not sure that rock 'n' roll is the right definition for what the band is producing.

"I don't really think that Sonic Youth is a rock 'n' roll band, but I wouldn't know what to suggest calling us either," says Shelley. "I mean, rock 'n' roll seems like such a funny term. We're definitely based in the tradition of guitars and drums that started with Chuck Berry.

"I certainly don't think that rock 'n' roll music is played out as a form, though—even though I listen to less and less rock 'n' roll because there is so much other music and there are way too many rock bands out there right now. But there's always something that surprises me in rock 'n' roll. There's still always someone who has that magic, someone who can put something together that draws people.

"I think you could even go so far as to say that songwriting was over—that who needs to write another song? But sometimes people still come up with things that move your heart or stimulate your imagination. And isn't that what creativity is all about anyway?

"I mean, does something have to be stretching the boundaries of its form to be worthwhile? That's something for the critics to think about, and it doesn't really concern me."