Sonic Youth
Daydream Nation

THE REVIEW

We find ourselves in 1988. But before discussing the album in question, let's take a nice journey back seven years.
It's 1981 when a guy named Glenn Branca launches ''The Ascension'', an experimental album: chamber rock music. Recorded with four guitars at incredibly high volume, a bass, and a drum, and published almost like a thesis: experimentation and analysis of dissonance and microtonality, minimalism, alternative tunings.
Branca manages to create a rock symphony that will lay the groundwork for everything we're about to discuss.
Why this detour? Well, a certain Lee Ranaldo participated in that album, who would later become the guitarist of Sonic Youth.

Before returning to 1988, let's specify that albums like Evol or Sister are nothing but spontaneous forms of what Daydream Nation will be.
So what does Daydream Nation have more than the others? Why is it considered one of the greatest Rock music albums in history? Why the apex of the Sonic Youth?
In those years, the group members experiment, sow, and finally with Daydream Nation, they reap all the fruits of their labor.

There is music to hear, and there is music to listen to. Daydream Nation is an album that must be strictly listened to (preferably with a good pair of headphones or an excellent audio system).
This is because otherwise, it would be impossible to comprehend the album as it was conceived.
Daydream Nation is nothing but the perfectionism of studies started by Branca in 1981 with The Ascension, cleverly turned in a purely Rock manner (it cannot be classified as avant-garde or minimal music; Sonic Youth is effectively a Rock music band).
It's one of those albums that can either be liked or not, but in its realm, it represents a monumental work.

Steve Shelley will establish himself here as a full-fledged virtuoso of his instrument, Gordon will manage to compose some of the most compelling bass lines of her career, but the core of the entire work will once again be conceived by Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore.

Two guitars. Two totally abnormal tunings, yet studied to the smallest details.
For every single note of one guitar, the other contemplates it, exalts it, completes it.
The real strength of Daydream Nation lies in the fact that every sound is studied to the smallest details.
It's an homage to rock n' roll, to blues, to punk (conceptually), but at the same time, it's something completely new, fresh, and noisy.
This is where Sonic Youth matures and perfects themselves as artists: a band that, despite proposing cultured music, has never fallen into intellectualism for its own sake; rather, they have always skillfully reconciled experimentation with classicism, novelty with homage, and have always done so out of their own choice and musical formation. (Among their most famous covers, it's easy to switch from the Beach Boys to Captain Beefheart, just to give you an idea).

The album's highlights are many (Cross The Breeze, Eric's Trip, Hey Jony, and Candle in particular, but really they are all indispensable), each track has its own story, each track represents why Daydream Nation is a monumental work, but to avoid a very boring track-by-track, I will limit myself to spending some lines on what, for me, represents the peak of the New York band's entire career. The practical and reliable summary of what Sonic Youth is, and above all, why Daydream Nation is a masterpiece.
The track in question is the concluding ''Trilogy''. A sort of musical suite composed of three separate compositions, respectively called ''The Wonder''; ''Hyperstation'' and ''Eliminator Jr.''

''The Wonder'' is quite possibly the sickest, most twisted, and thrilling four and a half minutes you can find within the album.
Four and a half minutes of pure Noise-Rock. A track that gets straight to the point: Moore frantically screams, the riff is distorted, dissonant, while the other guitar plays something completely different, yet the result is magical, unique.
Sudden tempo changes, two guitars that blend perfectly. Then, almost an apparently improvised Jam, a pounding drum. Rock at maximum power.
The chaos is now skillfully harmonized by mature musicians, at the peak of their capabilities, and as I will always say, virtuosos of sound rather than technique.
A track never repeated within the New York band's discography.
''Hyperstation'' and ''Eliminator Jr'' complete the rite admirably.

It is something Sonic Youth had never achieved before, not so well, not in this manner.
With the new sound, a gigantic wall of sound is created, but each of the four instruments is perfectly audible individually.
Four different paths, generated by each of the four members. A single, impeccable result.

A work of art that can be liked or not, an album that can be considered the band's best or not, but which in fact
represents the stylistically most successful work of the group, and one of the musical peaks of the last century.

The cover was taken from a painting made in 1983 by Gherard Richter, a renowned German painter.