Sonic Youth's Open-Ended Creativity

The invention of Sonic Youth is a lot like the invention of the telescope. Both have been around for quite some time, both have been improved upon over the years and, most important, both are still focused, as it were, on their initial raison d'etre: to peer deep into the universe, search for its limit and find there is none.

Pushing the boundaries only to find another boundary to push, Sonic Youth change without changing, carrying on an artistic pursuit that seems as eternal as the universe. "On the one hand, there's been a certain evolution with our playing and our work over 20 years, and you could trace it from album to album," explained guitarist Lee Ranaldo, slouching comfortably against an antique velvety sienna-colored sofa backstage at Portland, Ore.'s Crystal Ballroom. "There's definitely another hand where it seems like nothing has changed from the very first album to today, in terms of how we approach it and who we are and what kind of players we are.

"It's like we started fully-formed," he continued, pausing to sip from a cup of coffee. "We continue to work and develop ideas, but in a lot of ways we're still the same — we're not like super good players now, where we started out as not knowing how to play. We still play the same way as we did when we started, in a lot of ways. It's more a matter of our sensibilities. That's what we work off of, more than musical playing styles. We more work off of this notion of the way our sensibilities are, and what we'd like to see happen."

The collective desire of the members of Sonic Youth to explore new territories through art remains steadfast. "We've grown over 20 years and our tastes have changed," Ranaldo said. "We've developed new passions and other things have kind of slid away. Things you're interested in change. But there's always a great enthusiasm inside of each of us for certain things that we're really interested in at the moment that's reflected in the music and reflects where we're at mentally. Those things change, but what doesn't change is that we continue to find things that do inspire us."

And an obsession in matters of art remains in place. "We all came to the band with those interests in mind — we were always fanatical about music and all this culture, continuously," he said.

Releasing their 16th album, Murray Street (Geffen) in August, Sonic Youth — Ranaldo, singer/guitarist Thurston Moore, vocalist/bassist/guitarist Kim Gordon, drummer Steve Shelley and, newest member, multi-instrumentalist/producer Jim O'Rourke — have explored many musical landscapes, as a group and individually. From noisy and ambient to melodic and structured, Sonic Youth have reinvented themselves dozens of times since forming in the early '80s; their art has evolved naturally. "We just start playing and let what's happening with the music tell us where to go," said Ranaldo, speaking freely, easily, and with an intellectual air. "And usually what's happening with the music reflects stuff we've been listening to recently that we're enthusiastic about or inspired by. Things come out of the playing sessions that tend to show you where the next batch of songs are gonna go in terms of their way of being."

It seems the sessions for Murray Street — the second album in a proposed trilogy on the cultural history of New York City — steered the band into the land of rock 'n' roll. Well, rock 'n' roll Sonic Youth-style. "With this record, we kept joking that 'we wanna make a classic rock record,'" Ranaldo said, smiling. "I think we all felt ready to make a rock record, that's maybe as much as the talk goes — a continual joke about it being a classic rock record."

Still, Murray Street is classic Sonic Youth, in that it doesn't fail to incorporate noisy rants and improvisational instrumentals alongside slightly more traditionally structured songs. "They balance each other out. We'd get really bored just playing songs or just playing improvised music," Ranaldo admitted. "I think it's a happy medium for us to be able to work in both camps. It's fun to play improvised music and play structured music — play poppy material and out stuff. All those poles — noisy versus beautiful — they all kind of balance each other out in our music a lot.

"We tend to think most of our fans are pretty adventurous and like that place we sit in, where we provide both," he added. "There's a lot of noisy experimental gems, and there's also some more tuneful songs; it seems like a happy medium."

Ranaldo feels the bandmembers' fairly constant exposure to art and new music has a major impact on their own work. "It comes from being voracious music listeners and really having a lot of wide-ranging tastes among the five of us," he explained. "And, more than anything else, we listen to a lot of music and we like a lot of different kinds of things. So, we don't feel super inclined in our music to hold ourselves to any one thing.

"We don't conceptualize too much when we're writing music, or really preconceive it at all," he continued, "so it's not like we think of it in terms of the songs versus the ambient noisy thing. We just write songs and however they come out is how they come out, basically. We don't prepare for making a record in that regard either like by saying, 'Oh, you know, we've got to do this kind of thing here.' We just write the songs and whatever is happening is reflected in the album.

With Murray Street what was happening was the addition of a fifth member — Sonic Youth's first writing and recording experience as a quintet. O'Rourke brought a fresh angle to the group. "The things we were most excited about with this record was having a fifth person for the first time in the whole process," said Ranaldo, clearly pleased. "So that was enough to make it a completely different experience, and it's made it really fun. It was a very different thing; we had somebody new in the rehearsal room with us every day, and it gave it a bit of a different edge.

"He fits right in and adds another level of excitement — another person to talk to and bounce ideas off of, and another person with ideas, which is good," he said.

Sonic Youth have worked with O'Rourke in various ways since the early '90s. O'Rourke was the opening act for Sonic Youth's '99 tour, which is when he became close to the bandmembers. "From that point forward we started spending more time together, hanging out, and one thing just kind of led to another," said Ranaldo, his dark shaggy hair, streaked with silver, accented by the bright pinks and blues of his plaid cowboy shirt. "It wasn't really part of anybody's agenda. We weren't looking for a fifth member and he wasn't looking to be in Sonic Youth — it just happened. It happened gradually.

"It really happened when we went out [to tour] for NYC Ghosts and Flowers. He put down some bass parts on some of those songs on the record and then we were like, 'Well, gee, what are we gonna do now when we go out? Who's gonna play these bass parts?' We asked him if he would, he said yeah, and it was immediately very comfortable. At first it was kind of a joke like, 'All right, now you're in the band' and it very quickly became serious."

Working as a quintet has brought changes to the group's sound. "Sometimes the music gets far more dense because there's an extra person there with a big loud guitar in the mix," he said. "But it seems to allow the music to get more spacious in a certain way. Like I find I can play a little bit less sometimes and make the pieces I play feel a lot more meaningful; there's somebody else having to hold down the ship. It feels cool, 'cause once in a while you can just drop out and it doesn't leave a big hole like it would've with a four piece."

Sonic Youth began recording for Murray Street in September at their own Echo Canyon Studio, which sits on Murray Street in the Village, just blocks away from where the World Trade Center once stood. But, following the attack, they were unable to return to recording until December 2001, wrapping up the sessions this past April. The bandmembers had no desire to make an album about Sept. 11, according to Renaldo. "I don't think any of us felt like we really needed to use our record to talk about this major event in world history at that moment," Ranaldo said, sounding like he had no doubt about the decision.

Ranaldo said the terrorist attacks in New York hit him hard. "Everything is different. It's still hard to believe that something like that happened," he said. "In a way, it drags America kicking and screaming into this situation that plenty of other parts of the world have been facing all throughout the 20th Century. Terrorism and warfare, people having their homes bombed — it's something America has been able to ward off, for the most part. It's a wake-up call to the way in which the rest of the world lives.

"In any case, I think it certainly changed everything for the entire world," he continued in a somber tone. "It makes you a little more wary of things; flying in planes is weirder and just walking down the street is a bit weirder to some degree. It brings, unfortunately, an air of fear and distrust, which is always a drag to have fostered, and it's there now more than ever."

Ranaldo and his bandmates are musicians and songwriters, but their artistic merits don't stop there. Their interests also include writing poetry and narrative pieces, managing their own SYR record label, and filmmaking. "I guess we like to be workaholics just 'cause it's fun," Ranaldo said. "We're interested in being artists basically — I think that's what we think of ourselves as actually in whatever medium we choose. This is the life we've chosen.... that's what we wanna do until we can't do anything anymore." — Jenny Tatone [Friday, Sept. 20, 2002]