Sonic Youth

Their revolutionary impact unfolds along three axes: the first, already mentioned, is the synthesis of distant, sometimes antithetical, genres and sounds. The music of the four New Yorkers (five from 2000 onward) is in fact a "total" guitar-driven rock, a kind of indefinable monstrum that crosses the syntax of garage-rock, punk, no-wave and hardcore, applying them now to the trance of psychedelic rock, now to the gentlest guitar pop, now to free-form textures or to hard rock. Intellectuals, yet deeply versed in rock and passionate about pop culture, Sonic Youth introduced the Grateful Dead to the iconoclastic world of hardcore and small independent labels, absorbing thirty years of pop music suggestions into a sonic mass that could be furious, nihilistic, dreamy, delicate, heavy, disturbing, frightening and sensual, sometimes all at once. They've been labeled "noise-rock" for the abundance of noise in their compositions, but plenty of other definitions would fit just as well (while still being reductive) to capture the many faces of their music.

Il secondo punto cardinale è quello prettamente tecnico: i Sonic Youth hanno cambiato il modo di concepire la chitarra elettrica, usandola in modo totale, cioè spingendosi oltre il suo utilizzo ortodosso. Sfruttando la lezione del compositore Glenn Branca, i chitarristi Moore e Ranaldo suonano lo strumento chitarra nella sua interezza, sfruttandone la componente fisica (corpo, manico, elettronica) tanto quanto quella melodica (note, accordi, scale), arrivando a preparare le chitarre, modificarne l’elettronica, percuoterle con oggetti, cimentarsi in droning e feedback, o – nelle parti melodiche – sperimentare accordature atipiche. La stragrande maggioranza delle loro canzoni è costituita da poche note e semplici accordi, ma suonati con accordature inusuali che contribuiscono (anche grazie a un uso preponderante dell’effettistica) a generare quel suono storto, sgangherato e liquefatto che hanno perfezionato nel corso degli anni.

Finally, crucial was the iconographic contribution they made to underground culture, with their surreal, estranging lyrics, their youthful and eccentric look, and their commercial ethic, which first turned them into indie stars (Kim Gordon especially, by now a true "feminist" icon of rock), and later into genuine patrons, always on the lookout for young bands and new alternative acts to promote, as happened with Italy's My Cat Is An Alien, discovered by Thurston Moore.