A gentle point of entry into the influential band’s sprawling back catalogue.
If you affiliate yourself in any way with punk, grunge, alternative or avant-rock and haven’t yet familiarised yourself with at least a handful of Sonic Youth recordings then there’s something sorely wrong. They’ve shared stages and labels with your favourite bands be they Swans, Black Flag, Nirvana or Merzbow and influenced more nerdy teenagers to experiment with alternate tunings and feedback than you could possibly shake a stick at. Without them we most likely wouldn’t have ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, Mogwai or The Men and a whole generation would be fuddling around in the dirt wondering where to take rock music next.
With the future uncertain given the rift between Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon, this re-release of Hits Are for Squares is crass yet timely: a welcome reminder of the band’s breadth, reach and influence and an effective follow-up to 1994’s Screaming Fields of Sonic Love ‘best-of’. Being no strangers to kitsch, star-struck celebrity goggling it’s perhaps fitting that alongside the musical luminaries handpicking the tracks here – Beck, Eddie Vedder and Mike Watt of the mighty Minutemen – are directors, actresses and other such glitterati keen to coo at the feet of alt-rock’s eldest statesfolk.
Lees de rest van deze review op BBC CD recensies (Engels)
Bron: BBC Music