Quotes About Sonic Youth

In Sonic Youth, at the end of 'Expressway to Yr. Skull,' we'd tap on the backs of our guitars to get this low-level feedback, and if I leaned forward, and the guitar hung off my body, it would resonate differently.

It's as if Sonic Youth has gone back to the very beginnings of the process by which the world reveals itself as something other than its advertisement, as if the band has discovered the most marginal no," Marcus wrote. "The power of Sonic Youth's no will be negligible; few will hear this music. That the spirit of the act is still at work may not be.

Sonic Youth recognized two things: One, that without substantial radio airplay, press was the main promotional outlet for underground bands, and two, that underground music fans paid particular attention to music criticism.

The members of Sonic Youth realized that "a life involving music" depended on cooperation—if bands worked for each other, everybody would benefit.

Relationships are currency, something Sonic Youth had picked up on not only from the art world but from the camaraderie of the SST bands.

We were like psychedelic folk combined with Sonic Youth's noise.

I've been trying to challenge myself to be more explicit. I've always liked punk rock and Sonic Youth. I make that music privately, but I've never released it.

I think Thurston's and my weird tunings lent Sonic Youth a very different sound from the get-go. In the band's 30 years - aside from covers - there are maybe two or three songs we wrote using traditional tuning.

I've always been an acoustic guitar player, and I've pretty much continued to play acoustic guitar throughout all of the Sonic Youth periods. My material for Sonic Youth often started on acoustic guitar.

During the whole time in Sonic Youth, I was happy to put my energy into that. It would have been very difficult to do a solo project.

Sonic Youth could never really get it together acoustically - quite frankly, it wasn't something we were really that interested in.

Obviously, Sonic Youth has been a huge part of my life for many, many years, and I love all those guys dearly.

Sonic Youth played one show before we even had a drummer. It was just me, Kim, and Thurston. The lights slowly went down, and the set was just 30 minutes of feedback.

I really do prioritise humour in people. It's a sign of intelligence. One of the most important things I heard that moulded me was Derek and Clive. That sense of release when I heard them for the first time, crying and laughing, was akin to seeing Sonic Youth for the first time.

Hardcore groups were singing songs about Ronald Reagan. I wasn't interested in this and preferred to sing about the darkness shimmering beneath the shiny quilt of American pop culture. I suppose you could say that Sonic Youth was always trying to defy people's expectations.

I've been lucky enough to be in this amazing band, and to me, a band is really a collaborative unit, and that's definitely been what Sonic Youth has been.

'Europe '72' was a super influential record full of fantastic songs and amazing experimental musicianship. I always valued both of those aspects in what Sonic Youth has done through the years - being able to get very abstract and very concrete within the same song.