Sonic Youth
Sister

THE REVIEW

"I went away to see
an old friend of mine,
his sister came over,
she was out of her mind [...]
She keeps coming closer
saying I feel it in my bones
Schizophrenia is taking me home"

These are some lines from the opening song of "Sister," the album Sonic Youth released in 1987.

The temptation is to read them metaphorically and see in the old friend the noise, and in the sister trying to rediscover herself, the melody and the song form.

Indeed, in this album, Sonic Youth perfected the path they started the previous year with the splendid "Evol," a path that led them to merge sound experimentation and the exploration of new guitar techniques with the quintessential pop music form, the song.

In this, it's hard not to see the influence of their contemporaries Dinosaur Jr, who in the same year released their most celebrated work, "You're Living All Over Me," where not coincidentally we find Lee Ranaldo on vocals in the opening song. Thurston Moore's appreciation for the melodic and sonic "genius" of J Mascis is also well known.

The sound of "Sister" is also akin to that of "You're [...]," blurred due to sound distortion, yet saturated and warm. A parallel can also be drawn in the albums the two bands would release the following year, the celebrated "Daydream Nation" and the less celebrated but still excellent "Bug," where the noise approach is pushed to embrace its very opposite, namely a meticulous and painstaking care for sound and composition.

In "Sister," we find typical elements of the song, care for the lyrics and vocal parts, fused with the classic noise rides where Moore and Ranaldo's guitars engage in dialogues to create the typical tension that characterizes the band's sound in the late '80s.

All the tracks are excellent, making the album flow pleasantly without obstacles, despite its often challenging sounds.

In "Pipeline/Kill Time," Lee Ranaldo perfects a semi-spoken recitative style that would often return in the future, particularly apt in contrasting the apparent control of a monotone singing with the underlying sonic magma.

"Tuff Gnarl" opens with Thurston Moore in a splendid and heartfelt melodic vein, immediately subdued in a classic noise drift.

"Beauty Lie in the Eye" is Kim Gordon in all her melancholic sweetness. And the fact that beauty lies in the eye and not in the eyes, suggests a weak connection between the two brain hemispheres, sometimes causing rational or emotional excesses.

The album closes with "Master-Dik," a successful attempt at contamination with hip hop.