Sonic Youth
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Interview by John Robb, Melody Maker, 24 August 1991
As they prepare for their appearance at this weekend's Reading Festival, Veteran art rock terrorists talk to Johnny Robb ...
Interview by Stephen Dalton, The Times, September 2005
BACKSTAGE AT V Festival, the queen mother of punk rock shelters from the punishing sun. With her dirty-blonde hair and boho-bag-lady chic, Kim Gordon cuts ...
Audio interviews
Interview by Martin Aston, Rock's Backpages audio, April 1986
The New York noisesters discuss the chronology of rock movements and their roots in No Wave; deny ripping off the Stooges; explain their name; talk about their guitar collection, their creative methods, how they carry the torch of rock'n'roll and struggle with engineers... and why they covered songs by Madonna and Kim Fowley.
File format: mp3; file size: 46.7mb, interview length: 48' 35" sound quality: ***
Interview by Richard North, Rock's Backpages audio, March 1989
A positively psychedelic interview which ranges from Karen Carpenter to the interview process itself, via strap-ons, James Joyce and acid house. When not giving interviewer North a really hard time, Thurston Moore treats us to his finest Johnny Thunders impersonation.
File format: mp3; file size: 57.2mb, interview length: 1h 02' 29" sound quality: **½
Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore (1994)
Interview by Steve Roeser, Rock's Backpages audio, 19 July 1994
From his youth in Bethel, CT., through his early days in NYC, forming Sonic Youth, through to alt.superstardom, signing with Geffen and hanging with Nirvana and Neil Young – it's all here.
File format: mp3; file size: 73.7mb, interview length: 1h 20' 33" sound quality: ** (phoner)
List of articles in the library
Overview by Andy Schwartz, New York Rocker, November 1981
TO ANYONE who's been reading this magazine even semi-regularly for the past year, it should be obvious that there's something very wrong with the current ...
Sonic Youth: Sonic Youth (Neutral Records Import)***1/2
Review by Ralph Traitor, Sounds, 5 June 1982
SONIC YOUTH, the first release on avant-garde missionary Glenn Branca's Neutral Records, is an EP in LP's clothing, and in many ways the music it ...
This Savage Breed: Sonic Youth: Kill Your Idols (Zensor, German Import)
Review by Don Watson, New Musical Express, 12 May 1984
"KILL YOUR IDOLS/With Sonic Death" — scrawled across the label and screamed across the searing noise, the statement of intent on the latest release by ...
Sonic Youth: Bad Moon Rising (Blast First BFFP 1) *****
Review by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds, 9 March 1985
FOR THEIR third assault upon the senses, and the first for their new label, New York's powerful and passionate Sonic Youth take a Creedence title, ...
Sonic Youth/Frank Tovey & Boyd Rice
Live Review by Caroline Sullivan, New Musical Express, 30 March 1985
AAAAH! CATHARSIS time again! ...
Interview by Byron Coley, Spin, August 1985
Hear a rumbling from Manhattan's Lower East Side? That's Sonic Youth's squall of the wild ...
Lydia Lunch, Sonic Youth: University Of London Union
Live Review by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 7 June 1986
HUMBLE PIE time. Just when I'd neatly dismissed them from my mind as Grand Funk Railroad with a degree in Modern Art and a copy ...
Interview by Cath Carroll, New Musical Express, 21 June 1986
SONIC YOUTH chortle to CATH CARROLL on the expressway to your hearts. ...
Sonic Youth: Sister (Blast First)
Review by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 30 May 1987
FLOWERS IN THE DUSTBIN ...
Sonic Youth: Sister (Blast First)
Review by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 30 May 1987
SONIC YOUTH is the itching, striving sound of a literate rock group struggling to assassinate their own intelligence, to unseat the mind's mastery, and achieve ...
Sonic Youth, fIREHOSE: Town And Country Club, London
Live Review by Roy Wilkinson, Sounds, 13 June 1987
KICK OUT yr jams and say hello to the Neuro City 4 Itinerant Rockin' Circus Ensemble (Incorporating The Iggy Pop Sound Experience). ...
Sonic Youth: Super Sonic Sisterhood
Interview by Mark Sinker, New Musical Express, 20 June 1987
2005 note: Mostly what I read in this piece is what a fight it seemed to get anything said about "rock" in 1987, in the ...
Sonic Youth And The Great Cosmic Blender
Interview by Mark Dery, RIP, August 1987
SKATEBOARDS, ELVIS Presley, Wrestlemania and trashy sexploitation flicks-eventually everything goes into the battered black cauldron called modern pop culture. And like the spumy, molten soup ...
Honey of the 'Core: Ten Years After... and it's Almost Independents Day
Interview by Ralph Traitor, Sounds, 16 January 1988
During 1987 the US indie underground began surfacing in much the same way as it had here a full decade earlier. BYRON COLEY, co-editor of ...
Report and Interview by Keith Cameron, Sounds, 13 May 1989
Sonic Youth wound up their 'Daydream Nation' tour in the USSR and Keith Cameron joined them to play chicken in Kiev and Moscow. ...
Will Sonic Youth Keep Rock Honest?
Comment by Tim Riley, The Boston Phoenix, 16 March 1990
EVER SINCE punk failed to explode rock's dysfunctional excess with red-faced ire, hardcore noisemakers have been wrestling with the problem of how to be outrageous. ...
Underground Rhapsody: Sonic Youth
Profile and Interview by Mark Sinker, City Limits, 30 August 1990
I GET BACK to Bay Ridge just after midnight, to find the guys in the house watching Sonic Youth on Night Music in the room ...
Sonic Youth: A Load Of Tony Baloney
Interview by Roy Wilkinson, Sounds, 1 September 1990
Sonic Youth aren't impressed with Manchester's latest contribution to rock culture. In fact, they think it's a pile of "contrived shit", a real homoerotic, lads-together ...
Neil Young & Crazy Horse/Sonic Youth: Madison Square Garden, New York NY
Live Review by Simon Reynolds, Melody Maker, 16 February 1991
THE WILD FRONTIER ...
They Tried With Their Boots On: Sonic Youth
Report and Interview by Gavin Martin, New Musical Express, 11 May 1991
TEN-YEAR VETERANS of American clubland, Sonic Youth were on the brink of going overground. We were meeting them at a crosspoint in their career. They ...
Sonic Youth: Dirty Boots (DGC)
Review by Max Bell, Vox, June 1991
WALKING ON MUDDY WATERS: Sonic Youth attempt to produce an easy listening album and fail gloriously. ...
Reading '91: Reading, Writhing And Riffmatic
Live Review by Keith Cameron, New Musical Express, 7 September 1991
FRIDAY: IT WAS obvious, really – he had to say it. Who better than His Supreme Iggyness Of Pop, the Godfather of (s)punk rock, to ...
Thurston Moore and Mike D: Starpower
Interview by Mark Kemp, Option, July 1992
THE SCENE: A TRENDY RESTAURANT in L.A. called the Hollywood Canteen. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth is sitting in a corner booth, slouched over a ...
Review by Ted Drozdowski, The Boston Phoenix, 17 July 1992
IF THERE'S ANYTHING all great rock-and-roll bands – from Muddy Waters' early-'50s Chicago electric outfits to Chuck Berry's Chess session players to the Rolling Stones ...
Here Come The Noise Terrorists: Sonic Youth
Interview by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 21 July 1992
THUNDEROUS mantra-grooves and jagged fanfares of atonal brass boom across the parched grass of New York's Central Park, though it could equally well be Monterey ...
Review by Keith Cameron, Vox, August 1992
WHEN NIRVANA released their epoch-making Nevermind, their ambitions extended no further than selling as many copies as Sonic Youth's major label debut, Goo. As chance ...
Interview by John Robb, Siren, August 1992
JUMPING ON their own bandwagon, Sonic Youth are the old Nirvana, baton carriers of the underground spirit through the late '80s and early '90s, paving ...
Review by David Cavanagh, Select, September 1992
SONIC YOUTH were the progenitors of American noise nouveau. Now they're back on top of the dirt-pile. ...
Review by Mat Snow, Q, September 1992
NOW IN their 30s, this band are no longer quite so youthful as when they formed 11 years ago in New York, yet they remain ...
Interview by Keith Cameron, New Musical Express, 12 December 1992
As the Godparents of punk, SONIC YOUTH have seen their children break into the mainstream during the past year, signing major label deals and attempting ...
Sonic Youth, Pavement, Huggy Bear: Rainbow Club, Bristol
Live Review by Dele Fadele, New Musical Express, 19 December 1992
SONIC THE HEADSHOCK 3 ...
Dinosaur Jr.: Walk The Dinosaur
Interview by Lisa Verrico, Vox, March 1993
J. MASCIS IS a grunge fashion guru; all others turn to his band Dinosaur Jr. for inspiration. Indeed, the Seattle scene all but sprang from ...
Interview by Martin Aston, The Independent, 1994
IN 1991, WHEN Geffen Records signed the New York quartet Sonic Youth, the label couldn't have envisaged the band delivering two accessible albums by its ...
Sonic Youth: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star (DGC)
Review by Deborah Frost, The Village Voice, 17 May 1994
EXPERIMENTAL JET Set, Trash and No Star (DGC) is not the most experimental, jettiest, or trashiest record Sonic Youth or anyone else, for that matter, ...
Sonic Youth: Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star
Review by Ben Thompson, MOJO, June 1994
THIS IS SONIC Youth's tenth album in all, bootlegs excluded, and it finds them making a determined and ultimately successful effort not to settle into ...
The Carpenters: Chips off the old block
Report and Interview by Andy Gill, The Independent, 25 August 1994
The Carpenters are hip — and that's official. Andy Gill on the indie world's unexpectedly heartfelt tribute to Karen and Richard Carpenter ...
Sonic Youth: Way Downtown Way Kool
Retrospective and Interview by Steve Roeser, Goldmine, 16 September 1994
THERE ARE four of them, and they're definitely fab, but nobody (to our knowledge, anyway) has ever compared Sonic Youth to the Beatles. ...
Sonic Youth Clean Up Their Act: Washing Machine
Review and Interview by Martin Aston, Music Week, 1995
TRUST A BUNCH of New York art-rockers to contemplate jeopardising their increasing popularity by changing their name to Washing Machine, but that's what Sonic Youth, ...
Sonic Youth Go Guitar Crazy On Lucky 13th Release
Report and Interview by Robert Gordon, Rolling Stone, 13 July 1995
WHAT'S A nice downtown New York band like Sonic Youth doing in Memphis, Tenn.? Recording their next art-damage album, of course, and immersing themselves in ...
Memphis Sound Machine: Easley Recording
Interview by Robert Gordon, Spin, December 1995
Bands from Sonic Youth to Pavement have turned Easley Recording into the new lo-fi capital. ...
The Importance of being Sonic Youth
Interview by Mac Randall, Musician, December 1995
Sonic Youth take the Lollapalooza caravan to The Zone ...
Sonic Youth: Avery Fisher Hall, New York NY
Live Review by Michael Azerrad, Rolling Stone, 22 January 1998
Noise Goes to the Philharmonic ...
Sonic Youth: A Thousand Leaves (Geffen)
Review by Robin Bresnark, Melody Maker, 16 May 1998
Leaf It Out! ...
Sonic Youth: Goodbye 20th Century
Review by Everett True, Uncut, February 2000
IN THE trade, this is known as noodling. Noodling occurs when a bunch of undeniably talented musicians gather together and decide they've had enough of ...
Sonic Youth: NYC Ghosts & Flowers (Geffen)/Screaming Fields Of Sonic Love (Blast First)
Review by Mark Paytress, Record Collector, August 2000
HAVEN'T WE heard enough Sonic Youth records? On the evidence of the band's latest, NYC Ghosts & Flowers, I'd fly in the face of other ...
All Tomorrow's Parties: A Festival That Pops With Edge
Report and Interview by Marc Weingarten, Los Angeles Times, 13 March 2002
UCLA's ambitious All Tomorrow's Parties fest, curated by avant-rockers Sonic Youth, embraces the underground. ...
Interview by Peter Murphy (Irish), Hot Press, August 2002
IT’S A MUDDY TRACK only a few bands have managed to negotiate, but Sonic Youth figured out how to grow up and stay hardcore. From ...
Seeking Sonic Truth On Murray Street: Sonic Youth
Comment by Wayne Robins, waynerobins.blogspot.com, 18 September 2002
I'M AMUSED EACH day when I cross Murray Street, a miles-long, largely residential street that wends its way from downtown Flushing north through various small ...
Review by Everett True, Plan B, June 2004
IT'S SONIC YOUTH. It comforts. It cajoles. It caresses. It's classic rock. ...
Retrospective and Interview by Everett True, Plan B, August 2005
SO THURSTON MOORE'S leaning over the front of the stage, lanky, his instrument howling with distortion; one moment he's sawing at the edge of an ...
Punk's Queen Mother: Kim Gordon
Interview by Stephen Dalton, The Times, September 2005
BACKSTAGE AT V Festival, the queen mother of punk rock shelters from the punishing sun. With her dirty-blonde hair and boho-bag-lady chic, Kim Gordon cuts ...
Sonic Youth : Ripped It Up And Started Again
Interview by John Doran, playlouder.com, July 2006
Hollow jokes about their name and their actual age in the music press don't alter the fact that Sonic Youth are still making visionary music ...
Review and Interview by Keith Cameron, MOJO, July 2006
They created a new vocabulary for rock guitar and turned tricks with both the avant-garde and MTV kids. After 25 years, can Sonic Youth still ...
No Wave: Histories Along The Bowery
Interview by Olly Beck, Garageland, 30 November 2008
The New York No Wave Movement: More Punk than Punk. Olly Beck talks to Thurston Moore ...
Sonic Youth And the Blast First Axis
Essay by David Stubbs, The Wire, 12 February 2009
AS FAR AS many people were concerned in the 80s, in the UK in particular, rock was a discredited medium. ...
Interview by Luke Turner, The Stool Pigeon, May 2009
Luke Turner feels the pall in the mall as he accompanies a pre-boogie woogie jam Sonic Youth on a shopping trip. ...
Interview by Jason Gross, Perfect Sound Forever, June 2010
SITTING ON A back porch in bucolic Western Massachusetts on a gorgeous summer's day, my friend’s adorable little daughter coyly asked, "Wanna see a picture ...
Sonic Youth and the Blast First axis
Retrospective by David Stubbs, The Wire, February 2013
A previously unpublished essay by David Stubbs, on Paul Smith's Blast First label and Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon's Sonic Youth. ...
Kim Gordon: Life after Sonic Youth
Profile and Interview by Dorian Lynskey, The Observer, 16 February 2014
Artist, musician and style icon, Kim Gordon has been at the cutting edge of culture for more than 30 years. Dorian Lynskey meets the singer ...
Girl in a Band by Kim Gordon (Faber & Faber)
Book Review by Ben Thompson, Daily Telegraph, 19 February 2015
Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon reflects on the break-up of her marriage and the loss of New York's netherworld ...
see also Ciccone Youth
see also Thurston Moore
see also Free Kitten
see also Dim Stars
see also Lee Ranaldo
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