“Rock: Sonic Youth, At Cat Club
By Robert Palmer
Oct. 25, 1987
NAME dropping, or “citing influences,” is a game rock musicians and rock critics play expertly, and these days the band name that seems to get dropped most frequently is that of the Velvet Underground. But when the Velvet Underground was actually making music in New York City, some 20 years ago, the band was an underground phenomenon, adored by its cult, ignored by the majority of rock listeners. The Velvet Underground wasn’t even one of the most popular local bands; Vanilla Fudge had more fans.
Given another 20 years of rock and roll, the show that Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore and the Blacksnakes gave Thursday at the Cat Club seems as likely to be remembered through a haze of nostalgia and myth making as the Velvet Underground’s 1967 performances.
Certainly Sonic Youth’s music is sufficiently vital and adventurous to warrant the comparison. Like the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth has forged an individual rock style from disparate influences – the garage-band punk tradition, the iconography and trash of popular culture, and New York’s experimental music scene. Both bands transformed, then transcended, their influences.
The important things about Sonic Youth aren’t the ingenious use of alternative tunings or the exploration of harmonic resonances; the important things are the music’s rigorous originality, the formal clarity, the urgency and, above all, the sound. It’s a New York City sound; the guitars come at you like a subway train hurtling through a tunnel, while the rhythm section throbs and pulses underneath. On Thursday, the band was more in control of that sound than ever. The songs from the group’s latest album, “Sister,” are tightly structured; playing them has helped bring Sonic Youth’s formidable power more sharply into focus.
Pussy Galore uses three guitars, each contributing a different range of textures and a distinctive rhythm attack, along with Bob Bert’s unusual drumming, which combines trash-can sounds with swing and precision. The arrangements filter some of the most flashy British blues-rock stylings through an ironic post-punk sensibility. The riffs are taut, the music moves; chaos intrudes, but isn’t allowed to overwhelm the solidity of the riff structures.
The Blacksnakes are still developing their own sound. But they already have an authoritative snarl, a headlong momentum, some sizzling guitar riffs and a fresh perspective on blues imagery and lore.”
