well, as mentioned here, i bought a bunch of records and have been spending my time listening to each of them, and Sister by sonic youth is one of them. Sister is something i discovered last summer, around june and july, and it’s something that took me a lot of listening to fully ‘get’ at the time. back then, my favorite bands were interpol and arctic monkeys. the reason why i was so determined to understand Sister was because of this song, the opening track.
when it comes to sonic youth, i’ve only listened to Daydream Nation and Sister. so my experience with them is pretty limited- but listening to them is what made me realize music can include abrasive, unpleasant noise, and noise can have the same cathartic effect a good solo or intensified final chorus has. in a way, they allowed me to listen to the kinds of bands i would’ve shrunk away from otherwise.
one thing that remains with me every time i listen to “Schizophrenia” is how eerie and otherworldly it is. first, you have steve shelley’s haunting, echoing drumbeat. chords start playing, and they’re simultaneously familiar and strange. and then thurston moore narrates meeting his friend’s mentally ill sister in this indifferent, unsympathetic way. kim gordon then takes on the role of the sister, her vocals deadpan but creepy, like the words of a stalker. and then the instrumentation just explodes. i could best liken it to the instantaneous expansion of the universe with all the tens of millions of galaxies forming within microseconds of one another. okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. but for a song that’s only four-and-a-half minutes? it feels like a lot. give it a listen if you haven’t already! 🙂
q-street 