SONIC YOUTH: THE DESTROYED ROOM 

1. FIRE ENGINE DREAM (10.22)
2. FAUXHEMIANS (4.03)
3. RAZOR BLADE (1.06)
4. BLINK (5.27)
5. CAMPFIRE (2.18)
6. LOOP CAT (5.39)
7. KIM’S CHORDS (6.01)
8. BEAUTIFUL PLATEAU (3.08)
9. THREE-PART SECTIONAL LOVE SEAT (8.15)
10. QUEEN ANNE CHAIR (4.36)
11. THE DIAMOND SEA (25.49)

“It’s been too long,” you decide. “This can not carry on.”

While those around you have long since stopped caring, you’ve carried on. And on. And on.

To the point where all you own is music. CDs. Vinyl. It doesn’t matter. 

Others are on their 3rd or 4th houses but you still live along a financial precipice on a dreadful estate with unspeakable neighbours and your CDs. And your Vinyl. 

You’ve not a dime, fella, not a ha’penny. You’ve barely even an ambition except that you’d like a lot of money to get and keep away from all of the stiffs. But the music keeps piling up. And every time you buy something new this, in turn, leads to something else. Something you’ve never heard or considered before. Something wonderful or noisy or strange or touching or cheering or heartbreaking or perfect or messy. And you know deep down that there are others who care because why would the music be made if no-one else cared? But you never meet these people, not from your generation. And you don’t meet these people from the generations (note the plural) below you, either. And from time to time you’ll play something to someone else and they may even give a passing passionate nod, and you’ll go through your this-artist or that-band phases and you’ll know that it’s RIGHT and OKAY but does it FULFIL? Does it make any DIFFERENCE? Really? 

So you decide: I’m not going to buy ANY music for a period of time — let’s say, a month. And you don’t; you’re as good as your word. But all that happens during that month is that you get a chance to catch up; to hear the music from your collection that you might have only played once and skipped a few tracks off. And one of those records just might be “The Destroyed Room.”

It was bought on a holiday — a really good holiday. Naturally, this was organised by someone else and you just tagged along, miserably contributing to little bits and bats because you couldn’t concentrate on the IMPORTANT stuff, like what other obscure track did such-and-such-a-body do and where can I get hold of it. But you never really gave this holiday CD a chance. All you did, you played the last 25 minute track once on the plane, but you couldn’t hear it properly as the CD walkman you’d bought was crap, and you were knackered anyway. 

Previously, all you knew of Sonic Youth was ‘Sister’ and ‘100%’ and maybe a half- dozen others. A little bit of “Goo.” You had them down as also-rans continuing to an ever-diminishing audience, but you didn’t know owt about them. You hated the name ‘Sonic Youth’. (Youth? At their age?) You thought they were soulless bandwagon-jumpers, forever clinging to an ill-perceived notion of themselves as trend-setters and taste-makers. You realise that this is nonsense about half-way through the first track.

Suddenly, Sonic Youth were not pretending to be teenage skateboarders – and they never were anyway, that’s just you and your eternal sad bitchy bitterness. Suddenly, Sonic Youth were artistic, clever, free, spacey, loud, rock ‘n’ roll, and – by gum – maybe even spiritual. And nearly every track is instrumental, and maybe only a third with yer traditional Sonic Youth instrumentation. These would be ‘Fire Engine Dream’, ‘Fauxhemians’, ‘Kim’s Chords’ & ‘Three Part Sectional Love Seat’. ‘Kim’s chords’ is a track too much, but the others are just great. They breathe energy and a balanced dichotomy of power & delicacy that other bands can only dream of. 

A band is more than the sum of its parts, as every great band has found out post-split. If you don’t continue with the same spirit, then the spirit finds another to continue with and you’re on your own again – 4 or 5 ordinary people where once there was an entity.

‘The Destroyed Room’ – by design a contractual obligation, in reality a daring series of sketches and experimentations – shows Sonic Youth as one of the great spiritual entities. Where Kevin Shields didn’t have the nerve or confidence to continue, Sonic Youth took an attitude to put out what they could when they could and let what would be with the results. That a hodgepodge collection like ‘The Destroyed Room’ ends up being more ‘Fly’ than ‘The b‑sides’ speaks volumes of this band’s collective spiritual pool.

Kim Gordon has one of music’s all-time great voices. A voice that defies, coaxes, whispers, shouts, projects and, above all else, feels. Her ‘Razor Blade’ & ‘Blink’ are certainly highlights, showing a darker, European edge to the band. It’s no surprise that ‘Blink’ originally shared space with Scott Walker on the ‘Pola X’ soundtrack. The Scott of ‘And Who Shall Go To The Ball?’ A finer and more appropriate pairing is difficult to imagine.

Then there are the little electronic experiments – ‘Loop Cat’, bits of ‘Three Part Sectional Love Seat’, bits of the heavily treated ‘Beautiful Plateau’. Gorgeous. Way beyond the ‘alt-rock’ template. Way beyond what you may have vaguely learned to expect from Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth have as much in common with Miles Davis as they do with Serena Maneesh. Who else can claim such impeccable diversity?

The 25+ minute version of ‘The Diamond Sea’ would have p—-d me off royally where I already a fan. Not because of the track — which begins almost traditionally before veering off into a feedback/psychedelic mix of backwards instrumentation and immaculate artistic purpose – but because it’s claimed in the album notes that this full version was left off the original album (the brilliant ‘Washing Machine’) because it was too long. It isn’t; there’s almost 10 minutes worth of space at the end of ‘Washing Machine’. (Perhaps they ran out of time to mix it properly or something). But hey, seeing as I wasn’t a fan all along, it made no difference to me. And such an epic, wondering, pondering, uplifting, even-deserving-of-that-much-overused-adjective soaring track like this deserves to be out there and worshipped. ‘The Diamond Sea’ sounds like fields full of snow.

Ultimately, ‘The Destroyed Room’ takes every aspect of Sonic Youth – their SYR series, their arty European cool, their American confidence – and presents highlights for both the long-time fans and gormless sods like me who they’d lost along the way. If all contract-fillers were a quarter as good as this, you’d take them above and beyond main releases.

It is difficult to think of another band who can out-claim Sonic Youth’s status as the very very best of the last 30 years. Better than the over-rated allegedly classic rock acts (The Who, Led Zep, etc), yet perversely also better than the ECM acts. Who else has tried to straddle such disparate corners? With ‘The Destroyed Room’, Sonic Youth show that such possibilities do exist, and that, you can’t help but conclude, is something to care about. Passionately. 

Now with 23 more Sonic Youth CDs on your shelf (and more to come) — ‘The Destroyed Room’ opened up yet another avenue of music to me. At my grand old age — even if no-one else cares, even if I’m skint and living in miserable conditions, even if I’ve no-one else to share it with – at least I know some good, good music. 

And somewhere, you know that that’s worth it. 

Somewhere, you feel that Sonic Youth know it is, too.