Featured In
ALBUMExpressway to Yr. Skull (Live) - SingleSonic Youth
Albums by Sonic Youth
ALBUMIn/Out/InSonic Youth
ALBUMSpinhead SessionsSonic Youth
ALBUMSimon Werner a Disparu (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)Sonic Youth
ALBUMThe EternalSonic Youth
ALBUMBattery Park, NYC: July 4th 2008Sonic Youth
ALBUMRather RippedSonic Youth
ALBUMThe Destroyed Room (B-Sides and Rarities)Sonic Youth
ALBUMKoncertas Stan Brakhage Prisiminimui (Syr 6)Sonic Youth & Tim Barnes
ALBUMSonic NurseSonic Youth
ALBUMMurray StreetSonic Youth
Sonic Youth's Popular Music Videos
Bull In the Heather
Sonic Youth
100% (Revised Audio)
Sonic Youth
Superstar
Sonic Youth
Kool Thing
Sonic Youth
Sacred Trickster
Sonic Youth
The Diamond Sea
Sonic Youth
Dirty Boots
Sonic Youth
Sunday
Sonic Youth
Little Trouble Girl
Sonic Youth
I Love You Golden Blue (Long Version)
Sonic Youth
Artist Playlists
Sonic Youth Essentials
From young primitives to indie rock's distinguished elders.
Inspired by Sonic Youth
Their feedback fueled generations.
Sonic Youth: Influences
Hello, 20th century.
Sonic Youth: Deep Cuts
Experiments with dissonant disco and other unlikely influences.
Sonic Youth: Experimental
Together and apart, SY's most out-there moments.
Artist Biography
There’s a moment on an old Sonic Youth live recording where, seeing that Thurston Moore is having trouble getting his guitar into its proper, highly unconventional tuning, Lee Ranaldo says, “We promise a new tuning every night, ladies and gentlemen!” It’s a throwaway line, but there’s poetry to it: Where else, in 1987, could you see a group of ostensibly avant-garde artists not only addressing the crowd, but making fun of their own avant-garde art while doing it? For 30 years, the band shaped the outer limits of sound—noise, free improvisation, modern classical—into something like rock music, bridging the visionary impulses of experimental art with the naive zeal of punk. No other band presided over so many developments in underground music: the evolution of punk and No Wave into what we now call “indie“ (the mid-to-late ‘80s run of Evol, Sister, and Daydream Nation), the alt-rock and grunge boom of the years that followed (1990’s Goo and 1992’s Dirty), the retreat into experiments (the SYR series) and final maturation into something like classic rock for ears weaned on noise (2006’s Rather Ripped and 2009’s The Eternal). They could be brutal, but they could also be pretty—a deference to tradition that, ironically, only made them seem more radical: What could be more confrontational to an art snob than a guitar anthem (“Teen Age Riot”)? And while their gender equanimity was inspiring (they had two frontpeople, Moore and his former wife, Kim Gordon), the real progress lay in how they played with it: Moore sounding sensitive and ethereal, Gordon roaring like a nightmare truckdriver; Moore, the head, Gordon, the body. No matter how far out their music got (Goodbye 20th Century), it never felt academic, a feat that brought experimental music down to earth and made rock seem more plausible and limitless than any artist since Jimi Hendrix. Reflecting on their career, Moore said the thing about those cheap thrift-store guitars is that they usually didn’t sound good in regular tunings anyway, at least until you shoved a drumstick under the strings.
Hometown
New York, NY, United States
Genre
Alternative