A Thousand Leaves

Performer: Sonic Youth
Producer: Don Fleming; Sonic Youth; Wharton Tiers
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Sonic Youth: Kim Gordon (vocals, guitar, bass); Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo (vocals, guitar); Steve Shelley (drums). Personnel: Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo, Thurston Moore (guitar); Steve Shelley (drums). Photographer: Mark Borthwick. Unknown Contributor Role: Frank Olinsky. Thanks in part to a preceding series of self-released instrumental EP's, A THOUSAND LEAVES was among Sonic Youth's most highly anticipated releases. Public interest in underground electronica seems to have rekindled the band's interest in making experimental-minded rock albums. A THOUSAND LEAVES demonstrates why, 18 years after they formed in NYC, this band was still regarded as the most forward-looking unit in rock. On long tracks like "Wildflower Soul," "Hits of Sunshine (for Allen Ginsberg)," and "Karen Koltrane," the interplay between guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo leads the songs into elaborate and inspired instrumental passages that recall the group's late '80s heyday. As usual, Moore, Ranaldo, and Kim Gordon split up the vocal duties, but this time Kim's singing is gruffer, almost a bark on "The Ineffable Me," while Thurston sounds breathier and more relaxed than ever on "Snare, Girl." Recorded entirely at the band's own studio, A THOUSAND LEAVES feels carefully constructed and produced while still immediate. Even after a dozen albums, Sonic Youth can still come up with over an hour of intriguing and vital new material.

Spin (6/98, pp.128-129) - 7 (out of 10) - "...what really keeps A THOUSAND LEAVES vital is the continually inventive fretboard effects of Moore and Ranaldo...and the infinite variety of buzz-saw drones and grinding, sparkling gold-plating adornments that cut open and irradiate these songs at every turn..." The Wire (1/99, p.27) - Included in Wire's "50 Records Of The Year [1998]" Musician (7/98, pp.83-84) - "...Sonic Youth has returned to its youth and found ways to explore the spellbinding discord of its early records without losing the focus that maturity and longevity endows....A THOUSAND LEAVES maintains that rough-hewn, trippy dynamic without sacrificing coherence..."

Drawing equally from punk rock and new-music pioneers such as John Cage and Glenn Branca (whom guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Renaldo both played with), Sonic Youth employed a palette of white noise that deconstructed punk-rock orthodoxy into radical new configurations. Seemingly the opposite of what major labels would want in a band, Sonic Youth inked a deal with Geffen records in the late 1980s and caught the ear of a certain mainstream listenership. With the release of their 16th proper studio album, RATHER RIPPED, in 2006, Sonic Youth secured their position as icons of underground and alternative culture.

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