Sonic Youth Perform Daydream Nation / Roundhouse, London
Daydream Nation grows old played live in London
Words Percy Bullock / Image(s) shot2bits.net
And lo! The eight-legged cow comes bounding upon the Roundhouse Stage as the Worshipful Hordes bow in Adoration before the Effulgent Rendering of one of the bovine Behemoth’s most notable Pats. The very Air resounds with the Fervour of the Faithful.
There’s no doubt that Sonic Youth are an important band: they paved the way for grunge and helped break the alternative into the mainstream. They kept true to their ideals, despite signing to a snorting major label. Most importantly, they’ve written some of the best weird-ridden pop songs in six-string history. The trouble is, they don’t play any of them tonight. Sure, Daydream Nation is a ground-breaking, emotive slab of brilliance but, with the exception of a searing ‘Total Trash’, it largely sounds dull - an endless dirge of the eminently bottleable Sonic Youth Sound. It’s hard to find any soul within: the band appear to be going through the motions, aware of the self-awarded significance of turning up to roll out a record that’d be more rewarding listened to at home, on headphones, while reading a cheery tome about the ravages of Reganomics.
With getting on for 30 guitars racked up onstage and Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo grinding their axes together in tumescent salute at the front, this reeks of both hoary rockism and onanistic narcissism. Yet the serious-looking hordes here present would no doubt sniff if they were watching any more conservatively-cock-rocking guitarist do anything similar.
The encore gets better, as Kim Gordon is freed of her bass to dance around like the strong frontwoman she was allowed to be for a couple of years before Jim O’Rourke buggered off to go a bit mad. Yet despite the blank-eyed assertions of everyone that they’ve just witnessed something akin to a divine manifestation, the evening is, like the sacred cow of Sonic Youth themselves, a frustrating experience.
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