I Don’t Mind If You Sing A Different Song

Sonic Youth “Paper Cup Exit” – As songs from the new Sonic Nurse LP slowly appeared around the internet over the past week and a half, I became somewhat nervous that none of the songs were quite good enough to be posted here. The first songs to surface in particular were alright but not especially inspiring – “Pattern Recognition” sounds like the band going back to their early 90s formula, and “Stones” could pass for an A Thousand Leaves outtake. I enjoy Kim Gordon’s “I Love You Golden Blue,” but I sense something missing in that song, though I haven’t spent enough time with it to figure out what that may be. “Unmade Bed” came next, and though it is a nice song, I can’t fully embrace it because it sounds as though they were holding themselves back from taking that song further into a direction that I suspect the members of Sonic Youth fear – disco and funk. If only they had just let it go and focused more on the groove at the start, it really could have been a new kind of Sonic Youth song – coulda woulda shoulda. The lead guitar parts on the song are gorgeous, though.

It’s not surprising to me that the first song that I embrace from Sonic Nurse (aside from “Kim Gordon & The Arthur Doyle Handcream” and “Peace Attack,” both of which I’ve known for a year now) would be the only Lee Ranaldo tune. I’m such a sucker for Lee – it’s come to the point where I think it’s safe to assume that a highlight of any SY record is going to be his turn at the mic. It’s just too bad that it’s all we ever get from him. I very much wish that he would do more songs, and that Kim Gordon would be the one to only do one or two songs per album from here on out.

“Paper Cup Exit” plays to both of Lee’s vocal strengths – he does his wordy speak-sing thing as per usual, and he sings earnestly on the more melodic sections while still seeming quite distant and aloof. There’s one strummed chord progression that is prominent in the song that sounds almost exactly like the one from his own “Karenology” from Murray Street, and I’m not sure if that is intentional or not. Given that “Karenology” (aka “Karen Revisited”) itself is a sequel to A Thousand Leaves‘ “Karen Koltrane,” I wouldn’t put it past them for including that theme as a nod to some intended continuity.

Elsewhere: Please welcome Christopher Porter’s The Suburbs Are Killing Us to the MP3 blogging game.

Also: Does anyone want to drive me down to Trenton, NJ to see a screening of the Glenn Tilbrook documentary One For The Road on May 8th? I’m not sure how much I’m kidding about this.