~music Listening Club 20 - Washing Machine
Hey, we made it to week 20! Here we've got this week's user-voted record: Washing Machine by Sonic Youth!
Washing Machine is the ninth studio album by the American experimental rock band Sonic Youth, released on September 26, 1995 by DGC Records. It was recorded at Easley Studios in Memphis, Tennessee and produced by the band and John Siket, who also engineered the band's previous two albums. The album features more open-ended pieces than its predecessors and contains some of the band's longest songs, including the 20-minute ballad "The Diamond Sea", which is the lengthiest track to feature on any of Sonic Youth's studio albums.
Taken from @Cleb's pitch:
I listened to this fairly recently and after my previous experience with Sonic Youth (Daydream Nation, Sister), which I thought was mostly just okay, fine, whatever, I did not expect to get as much enjoyment out of this album as I did. Yeah, it's Sonic Youth going even less no-wave inspired than before, but I think they fit far better into that groove of noisy-ish alt rock without the no-wave coming in at times. Maybe I just think the writing is cooler. All I know is it made me finally able to say "I appreciate Sonic Youth."
Here's the place to discuss your thoughts on the record, your history with it or the artist, and basically talk about whatever you want to that goes along with Washing Machine. Remember that this is intended to be a slow moving thing, feel free to take your time and comment at any point in the week!
If you'd like to stream or buy the album, it can be found on most platforms here.
Fun fact: In 1994 Sonic Youth considered changing their name to * Washing Machine*, but opted to name the record instead.
This is my favorite Sonic Youth record by far. While being extremely polished and fairly accessible compared to some of their older records, it still maintains the beloved Sonic Youth sound.
As far as album-flow goes, Washing Machine is easily one of the best ever. Every track compliments the track before and after, and it's nearly seamless.
I think @Cleb nailed it with, 'the writing is cooler.' Excellent choice.
Washing Machine has rapidly found itself rising into the ranks of some of my favorite albums. It's pretty much the only Sonic Youth album I've managed to get to actually stick things in my brain and make me think about them for quite a while after hearing it. "The Diamond Sea" of course, is a winding masterpiece (though maybe a bit too self-indulgent) worthy of its own post, each vocalist shines on their own tracks, the flow of the whole thing is wonderful. It all just manages to mesh itself together to get to me in a way that I wish more Sonic Youth would.
I appreciate parts of this album ("Panty Lies" and much of "The Diamond Sea" are excellent), but I still feel like this runs into the typical Sonic Youth problems for me.
It's like they were always out of their own era, but just cool enough that they knew what to do. Not that that's a problem, but when I listen to their records I constantly have it on the mind. They had their ear to where they could adjust their sound for maximum coolness, here moving from the straight up noisy alt rock that they helped make a thing to something with a bit of that somewhat Pavementy indie rock sound. But there's almost always something a little off. Usually it's that they aren't consistent enough songwriters to do something interesting once they find a cool sound, as is the case here, but sometimes they just don't sound fully into it and like they're just going through the motions, even on their super acclaimed stuff.
The big exception to this is probably Goo, by the way. They hit perfectly there, even though I'm still not sure how I feel about it overall.