Sonic Youth
Torino, 6 luglio 2002

THE REVIEW

Fond memories. In the summer of 1998, Sonic Youth had been in Collegno, during the same tour as Bob Dylan's concert, which I also attended, but that time it went wrong: after four songs, they ran away terrified by an impending semi-hurricane, with Thurston Moore shouting: «I don’t wanna die, guys». Even on the afternoon of July 6, 2002, it was raining, but in the evening the park of Pellerina in Turin finally welcomed them under a calm and starry sky. They had come from some French and also Italian dates (such as Cagliari and Arezzo). The latest record, “Murray Street”, marked a return to certain melodic overtones less present in their recent productions “A Thousand Leaves” (1998) and “NYC Ghosts & Flowers” (2000: here began a trilogy about Lower Manhattan, of which the second step was indeed Murray Street). It was the album of “Karen revisited” - and not just.

First of all, it must be said that in the Pellerina concert, the skillful hand of Jim O’Rourke, a brilliant bassist from Chicago (already a producer for Wilco and Red Crayola), who only from NYC played with Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, and Steve Shelley, offered a marvelous support (he would then leave them in 2005, after “Sonic Nurse”). The opening was entrusted to “Candle”, tense and electric, the ninth track of the legendary double album “Daydream Nation”. Meanwhile, Leonard thanked profusely for the applause; «oblong» Thurston commented on the starry vault, making jokes, winking, and «free» Kim, during her delighted improvisation, playfully kicked him - other times (and probably other kicks).

The approach of Sonic Youth was located at the confluence between the Dionysian and the playful, that is, between the escape in itself, uncontrolled, with dark traits, a plunge into the abyss, and the rule capable of dominating or reabsorbing it through the pleasure of jest and surprise. Not infrequently, the first sequence builds a melodic cue (a few notes embroidered on the guitar), but what is its function? That of a springboard for the rest of the song. It is nothing but a glimpse of an entire vision. In proceeding, this initial image is overshadowed and overturned. This was also evident that evening, in the climaxes that incinerated every melody, or in the cathartic guitar riffs. Take “Rain On Tin”, among the happiest pieces of “Murray Street”: the three leaders, assisted by O’Rourke and Shelley, a formidable drummer, dove into a suite that soon made the first idyll seem distant, ended somewhere, step by step, an innocent arpeggio after another - less and less innocent. And the sonic path slowed down, sped up, soared, returned to itself and moved away again, in waves. At the end of a fiery farandole, it returned to the skeletal initial motif. So it was there. Indeed, it had always been there, lurking beneath that carpet of distortions. That the «noise» of Sonic was most often intrinsically geometric, or that the two outcomes were not really so different in reality, was more than ever demonstrated - significant for a live performance - by at least two pieces from the Turin date, “Eric’s Trip” and the recent “Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style”. In both, the sonic vortex avoided the pitfalls of cacophony.

In Sonic Youth, breaking through the noise threshold led to a new expressive level, not the exhibition of a confused iconoclastic rage. Their noise, especially live, could also be pure abstractionism, as in the second part of “Karen revisited”: after some seemingly harmless verses, exploiting its self-destructive potential, the melodic line crumbled under the crossfire of distortions. There remained a crater made of scattered sounds, echoes, and rustles. Meanwhile, Ranaldo, like a shaman, dragged the guitar across the stage, turning it every possible way to extract the most varied effects, while, against an obsessive yet muffled background of cymbals, Kim, Thurston, and Lee raised theirs above their heads, also bringing them close to the amps so that every vibration, every quiver was captured: that same instrument that until a bit before painted singable melodies was now a vehicle of sonic dowsing. Result: the initial melody was dismembered, torn apart, made into pieces in a swirl of convulsions, as happens in “The Diamond Sea”, where at the eighth minute it begins to be softly suffocated, then is roughly handled, and finally, after a brutal titanic struggle, at the nineteenth, is sunk.

Moreover, Sonic, in their simplicity - no visual effects - knew how to guarantee a stage presence of impact. I still remember that, during the acrobatic “Kool Thing”, Kim was rolling on the ground, but it was especially her performance in “Kissability” and “Bull in the Heather” that was spectacular, its hypnotic progression quickly transformed into a rush of harsh and contrasting sounds even more threatening than in the track on the record.

Finally came the moment for encores, always bitter: “Disconnection Notice” and “Silver Rocket”, a great final burst of adrenaline. Applause, thanks for the lesson, and goodbye.

Certainly, the absence of memorable tracks like “Sugar Kane”, “100%”, “Washing Machine”, or “Song For Karen” was felt. Not to mention many other songs, from “Evol” as well as the boundless “Daydream Nation”. But how to reproduce such a repertoire in half an evening?