reasessing experimental jet set, trash, and no star
 

So, I put on EXPERIMENTAL, JET SET, TRASH, AND NO STAR today for the first time in forever. And I thought it was pretty damn good! I've long hated this record (and I'll always hate Dirty -- nothing will sway me from that), but I've also always believed "Bull in the Heather" is quite likely the best Sonic Youth song. I still believe this is so.. just listen to the way the instruments coalesce.. taken individually, the parts don't really sound like anything, but the way they come together (and since the guitars are extreme-stereo-separated and it was recorded live so you can hear elements of both parts in each speaker), it just sounds amazing..

But surprisingly, the rest of the album holds up better than I thought. The "sassiness" of the tracks still overwhelms them, and the lyrics are still crap ("SILLY WABBIT TWIX ARE FER KIDZ" what the fuck .. "TAKE ONE TWO CUMS DOCTOR'S ORDER I'D LIKE A CHEESEBURGER TO ORDER" Okay, Kim, we know you're going through menopause, but do you really need a fucking greasy-ass hamburger), but the .. "sassy" .. guitar lines are actually pretty cool. "Screaming Skull" rules!! Love the ear-piercing fake-harmonics in the spaces between the riffs and so on. "Waist" is really cool, as well, and some of the slower numbers (especially "Sweet Shine" and "Tokyo Eye") have some really wonderful tones and textures. The album shows Sonic Youth maturing, and it's weird.

Still, it's hard to listen to, knowing that this is the same band who created Daydream Nation before this and Washing Machine directly after this. A band who can craft this amazing epic tracks creating sassy sub-grunge noise rock.. it just seems weird... the lack of Lee songs also stings, and this is also probably the only album where the Kim songs are always better than the Thurston songs. So, it's a weird album. Still, it's way better than Dirty, Nurse, and Rather Ripped, so that's good, and it may even be better than Goo if I'm being generous. Just 14 truely fucked up pop songs. I can't help but feel that the band recorded this and didn't really care what came out of the sessions (starting the album off with an acoustic song seems somewhat daring but also kinda silly since the song isn't even very good).. it just seems kinda effortless.. I mean, just look at the shitty cover art for proof... but yeah. Worth another listen... better than I remembered.

I also listened to Psychic Hearts again recently and that album sucks.

I've always liked Experimental, Jet set, Thrash, and No star even though it's one of their most experimental albums especially after hearing DDN.

Psychic Hearts was awesome why do you hate it?

no matter how many times i try to listen to it, that album is still the bane of my existence.

i still don't have it.

too "sassy".

nope too many other albums higher on the priority list, actually the last sy album i bought was...ddn deluxe actually and before that rather ripped and that's a good year in between.

man, when archive release a cd/dvd combo of kousokuya and the new high on fire and mono albums are up for pre-ordering, then my 80% complete sy collection can wait a little.

Strange that you would start this thread, because I've recently made the exact same discovery! As proof, here are the myspace blogs I wrote about it (among other things--I was pretty stoned (obviously), so most of it's pretty random). But this album is awesome!! (As an aside, I went on to discover "Bad Moon Rising" stoned, which then became my favorite album. But EJSTANS held the title for a good two days!)

>>>This is what happens when Matt works the overnight shift, and I have no one to talk to.

* OMG, here's a memory: me and Jon driving up to Mark Cena's party, listening to Veruca Salt's "Resolver" (directly after Wilson Phillips' self-titled debut), then all of a sudden there's this roaring sound, like the aural part of TV snow turned up to "eleven" X [and (omg, I just (ahh!) changed a parenthasis to a bracket (and I just about did the same to this one (till I said "No! I'm not gonna take it anymore!!" (And god, "Bone" is fucking with me! * Oops, shit. Let me reread and regroup.
* [after 2 false starts] So (great job of regrouping, huh?)
* Aha! (starting at "X") [and why did Kim's yelping never strike me as this odd before? (in the best possible way!)]
* ...And so ever since then I've been living in fear of another spontaneous, ear-shattering eruption. Wait, what? But anyway, it chose to happen during "Screaming Skull."
* I really think this might be my favorite album. Wouldn't that be weird!
* I turned into Gollum during the last scream of "Sweet Shine."
* Oh lord, "Rock of Love" is still on. And it's still on... And what is he wearing??... And it's still on. And I am really ashamed of myself right now.

Currently listening :
Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star
By Sonic Youth
Release date: 10 May, 1994 http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=m...1&a=B000003TB0
12:01 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment - Edit - Remove
Monday, July 23, 2007
I love meat, salt, and EJSTANS

* "Now that's my idea of dessert!" (Oh, shit, I had this semi-clever thought direction (ahhhhhhh!) (and ps: this judge is a bitch!) about how to express my joy at seeing a contestant [on "America's Next Top Chef"] propose what basically amounted to a piece of duck on a stick ("Lollipop duck"), and something else that was coated in all sorts of delicious, but not very dessert-sounding, seasonings, as being a "dessert." But then I realized they had moved on to a different category.)
* Oh dear, I was afraid that would happen. Oh wait, I got it back (after the nasty t.v. tried to take it away!)
* "'Sweet Shine' is a total stoner jam!" (Then the crazy-ass ocd tangents) (and relating this to--oh, that's redundant.)
* Sheer beauty, random screams & pretty chord changes
* Ample time to turn it off, but if you forget to, you get one hell of a jolt.
* This is, as I have always contended, one of the best SY songs ever, and tonight it proved it to me like I had no idea why in the first place.
* The "Boom... Owww!" in 'Screaming Skull.' Why did I never notice it, and how fantastic!
* There was something else really important, but I'm done.
* "...So I'm gonna smoke that..." (It was about salmon, but she sounded fiendishly eager).

Currently listening :
Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star
By Sonic Youth
Release date: 10 May, 1994 http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=m...1&a=B000003TB0

I bought EJSTNS a few months ago because of Bull in the Heather. At first I wasn't impressed, and I shelved it for a while, but I thought I'd give it another go, and Sweet Shine became one of my fav SY songs, and I found other songs like Screaming Skull and Starfield Road to be great songs, now I love the album.

'Screaming Skull' gets in my brain and stays there.

I've always dug "Experimental Jet Set". As a matter of fact it was pretty much the album that got me into SY as a wee lad. First SY cassette I actually bought was "Dirty" but it wasn't until "Bull In The Heather" hit the radio that I really got hooked (and I still feel it may be their most perfect pop song). Not long after that I started diving into both albums and the rest as they say is history.... Back to the subject at hand, I've actually been reassessing both "Experimental Jet Set" and "Psychic Hearts" lately. Coming out around the same time I've always felt those two albums have quite a bit in common in terms of sound and overall feel. At least certain tracks do anyway. Just listen to "Self Obsessed and Sexee" back to back with "Ono Soul" and I think you'll see what I mean. One thing I always dug about "Experimental Jet Set" is the production. "Dirty" was probably too polished thanks to Andy Wallace's mixing (and his infamous use of triggered drum samples) but "Experimental Jet Set" has a nice organic sound to it that definitely foreshadowed "Washing Machine" and "A Thousand Leaves". A lot of the song structures on those two albums are obviously different, but I think the manner in which they were recorded and the resultant sound have their roots in the "Experimental Jet Set" sessions. So in a sense that album was the beginning of what was arguably SY's greatest era of all.

I love these kinds of threads: reassessing something I wasn't that i'm not sure about in the first place. We should do this for all their albums.

I've put the CD on right now, made a cup of coffee. Cigarettes at the ready. Now lets see:

Winner's Blues: More like an extended intro than a full-blooded track. Don't know if this is SY's first fully 'acoustic' song but it would've maybe worked better at the end, rather than at the beginning of the album. 'Teenage Riot' it aint!

Bull in the Heather: Undeniably catchy with great drumming from Steve and some of Kim's best vocals since the Halloween EP. And you can dance to it too.

Starfield Road: The first obviously 'Sonic Youth'-type track on the album. Again, great percussion but Thurston's vocals are horrible. Guitars have an almost space-rock feel to them.

Skink: I've never liked Kim's little-girl-lost approach to vocals. However, the way she says 'You' at the end of the 'I love you' line is as good as any Stooges era Iggy yelp.

Screamingskull: Great riff - albeit with that horrible solo bit in the middle that goes nowhere, great vocals, horrible lyrics. On the whole another one to dance around the bedroom to.

Self Obsessed and Sexxee: God, I really hate Thurston's vocal style on this album. The feedback comes in towards the end, trying to salvage some excitement but overall this sounds like a sketch of a song that never ultimately needed to be recorded in the first place. Great drumming from Steve though.

Bone: It does have that interesting drum/guitar thing, but when it shifts 'A Day in the Life'-style into Kim doing her usual 'please dont hurt me' vocals, I remember why I began to lose interest in this band around the time of the release of this album.

Androgenous Mind: This is one of those eternal can't decide songs for me.

Quest for the Cup: The worst beginning, when Kim sounds all pseudo-New Wave, this switches to something that's sort of OK in a scratchy-riff kind of way.

Waist: Horrible Thurston vocals. Guitars sound sort of great when cranked up on the stereo, but the solo is absolutely hideous. Nice yelp at the end though.

Doctor's Orders: A track that has the words 'mid period lethargy' written all over it.

Tokyo Eye: Can someone please tell Thurston that his vocals have never been his strong point. Some nice percussion samples, but the 'freak out' guitar moment is nothing special.

In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader: What could be a half decent track is again spoiled by Thurston's vocals.

Sweet Shine: Kim's vocals here aren't that different to her other performances on the album, but the melody is strong enough to turn this into something quite nice. Some great yelps again.

Listening to it it now, I'd say that on the whole this is a semi-forgettable album, peppered with a couple of excellent songs (BitH, Screamingskull), great drumming and some great yelps.

How could she be going through her menopause when she was pregnant at this point? that makes no sense, u can't get pregnant when going through menopause

Straying off topic slightly, I agree with what you're saying about about Experimental Jet Set but I REALLY don't understand this:

OH SORRY THANKS FOR THE CLEARING OF THAT ISSUE

NYG+F is my EJSTANS

always glad to help :D

Androgynous mind was always my favorite.

I've tried to get into this album a few times and aside from a few standout tracks it's never really grown on me. Bull in the Heather, Androgynous Mind, and Sceaming Skull I like a lot, but I've just never been a fan of this record over all.

I've always hated EJSTNS and Dirty. Not just because they don't live up to SY's other albums but I find them awful albums in their own right.

it's weird, as much as i love mark prindle's page, (and he actually seems pretty right-on most of the time) he rates this above sister, nyc, a thousand leaves, and a few other albums ...

he also gave rather ripped the same score as this ..

but then he gave confusion is sex a 10/10 and dirty a 3/10. which would seem to suggest that he knows what he's talking about... so, i've always been really interested in why he digs this album so much..

it has an undeniably good sound to it, it's just.. again.. i can't believe this is the same band who wrote cross the breeze!

hoooray for Experimental jet set trash and no star!!!!!!

Its was the 3rd SY album i ever bought, and i just loved it (why i am called screamingskull), i also thought they looked soooooo damn kool in all the photo's.

Thurston looks great here


and here

Skink is one of the very best SY songs. So atmospheric.

It's my favorite Exp Jet Set song along with Tokyo Eye. I always wondered what is Androgynous Mind about? Is that about Cobain?!?

In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader is my choice track.

It's a good LP, probably not so popular because it came in the middle of a wonderful series of releases, and didn't quite match them for overall class. I wouldn't want to be without it though.

Jet Set... is the perfect example of the transitional album. It occurs between two major albums or eras in a band's history, in this case Dirty and Washing Machine. As a result, the album's overall identity is confused, oscillating between one extreme ("In the Mind of the Bourgeois Reader") and its polar opposite ("Sweet Shine"). While the songs are often quite good, and always interesting, only one or two stick out as single material, and even those are telling. Idiosyncracies appear (more resigned Kim vocals, acoustic songs) and disappear (the mandatory Lee song), if only for one album, sometimes staying on into the next "stage".

That said, I really like this album. "Skink" and "Starfield Road" are really underrated songs.

My friend bought it used today.
$6
and washing machine, same price.
Thanks to me.

I've always thought that it was, but I can't say for sure.

it's my favourite sy album. it was the first one i bought and i got it at the lowest moment of my life (so far - go homer!). maybe you've got to be incredibly low, introspective and open to connect with it. anyway, i got it out of a second hand shop for £3 or something, in mint condition with the postcards still inside - an absolute steal. it's so underrated. i even had the audacity to be disappointed when i bought my next sy album - bad moon rising. i took it back to the shop and traded it for washing machine in the end, but that's another story.

like someone said before - skink and starfield road are outstanding tracks, two of their best. the apex of kims career is skink, i think. i get the feeling that everything before this was a truncated offering on her part. in the experimental context of the album she finally put down a track as playgroundy as she wanted to. it's a beautiful piece of honesty. it's tender, you can't help but fall in love with her. she doesn't have to pretend she had balls the size of grapefruits, she doesn't need to grunt her confrontation with you - she's at her most open, beautiful and tonally articulate.

lyrically the album may not be great, but at least it's not cliché. i'm all for 'bad' poetry as long as it is playful and fun. you know, the meter and rhythm and all those other pieces of poetic-jargon crap are FANTASTIC on this album, i think people must object to the words themselves and the nonsensicalness of it all. they were having fun, doing what sonic youth do best - making cool sounds. it's a lyrical jam, no pretension of meaning or substance - just kick-arse sounds conveying the strongest emotional stuff sy have ever done, in my ever so humble opinion. the words don't so much tell a story as create an environment, an environment you can certainly pull meaning from. they're jazzy, in an ageless way (not classic, just free and childlike).

if starfield road was 10 minutes long it would be one of their masterpieces. the abruptness of its ending is one of my only disappointments on this album (apart from androgynous mind, which sounds like a throwaway from thurstons solo album). it reminds me, in so many ways, of mildred pierce. although, having heard the extended version of that, maybe it is better that they cut starfield road so abruptly.


bugger it. watch this.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=AOkRCPgfUVY

get mozilla, get unplug plugin, unplug this, download flv converter, convert it into your preferred format, stick it on your video ipod, watch it every morning on the train to work surrounded by hundreds of people. see if you notice them at all.


the people wondering if AM is about cobain - you know, i can't say why, but i've always thought a good part of the album was about cobain, especially AM. never heard anyone make reference to it before so it's nice to know others have that feeling too.

I always think the "and" in the title should be changed to "or".

The first times I heard experimental jet set, i wasn't really paying attention to it- it was pretty much background noise. I listened to it enough times in that way until i had basically memorized the whole thing, then discovered what a great album it is.

damn this thread won't die

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuIidVMLTtM
'Rock'n'roll' upside-down, isn't it? So underrated.

oh yeah, self-obsessed and sexxee. another of their best tracks. reminds me of shoot, for some reason.

and what about screaming skull, in the mind of the bourgeios reader, bone etc. etc.

so many great tracks on this album. does anyone have a specific objection to the album? all i ever hear is that it's crap. why? is it the flow of the album? the tempo? perhaps it is just unfortunate to be jammed between dirty and washing machine (the later following very shortly afterwards). maybe people forgot about it more than hated it?

one thing i really dislike is when people say it is their quietest album. i don't get this, there are plenty moments of screaming guitars, lots of nice feedback. sure, there are a lot of harmonics - but then there is a lot of that on rather ripped. it's certainly more downbeat, but quiet only if you stop listening after winners blues.

maybe i'm just a fanboy, i wouldn't give any of their albums less than 3 1/2 stars.

i guess people call i quite 'cause of the production...

Proabably the most forgettable SY release, but it isn't bad at all.

if you don't love expjetset then as far as i am concerned you have no soul.
NO SOUL!

I love love love this one, sounds like airports and any record that sounds like airports is pretty spesh to me. J

Nice taste there.

I take it to be more about Jung's concept of the Anima and Animus, Taoism's Yin (receptive principle) and Yang (creative priniciple) energies, Blake's "Androgyne," or perhaps a little of all of the above rolled into a raw, rocking song.

Now "Junkie's Promise" on Washing Machine, that one, in particular and as you may know, is about Cobain. But, you probably have a point, andrei. The whole "and you were right" line sure does echo some Cobainisms...especially on "All Apologies."

Oh, and "Androgynous Mind" reminds me ever-so-slightly of The Coolies' "Pussy Cook."

hate this album. it's my least fav of any of them.

I've always thouhgt the same about that song. As for Androgynous Mind, I read an interview at the time where Thurston Moore explained that it was about the mental violence that the mind of a homosexual is subjected to by a tormentor, or society in general. I trusted it to be correct and he wasn't just kidding, because it makes perfect sense if you listen to the song itself and hear the sense of mental anguish and anxiety that the progressive screaming of the character in it reflects. I've asked about this on the questions thread because I'd like a confirmation in that it is an incredible song just from a purely psychological point of view, but who knows?