Schrodinger's Cat

in the sprawl part 2 / sonic youth review

As predicted the Auckland visit's leached away my savings, so I'll have to see if I can get a day or two of work from Student Job Search. They don't seem very keen on answering the phone though and the website only has longer term jobs so I'll have to go into town and visit them. I dropped a friend off at work this morning, had a taste of Auckland commuter traffic - not something I could be bothered living with every day. On the other hand having managed to borrow a car has been handy.

Sonic Youth gig was good. I got there in time for the last twenty seconds of Birchville Cat Motel's set, great to see him up there - made a change from playing to audiences of two or three people at The Space. The St James complex was a better venue than the town hall where I saw SY in 1998, a tall theatre building with a warm glow. SY were having a good night, this was immediately apparent from their entrance. Last time they walked in, waited for applause to die down then started quietly. This time there was a noise drone and they came in one by one, Lee Ranaldo nose down in a book, and it led into something off the Sonic Nurse album - I'd heard the album but don't know the track names. Their sound these days is very sensuous, relaxing and gentle even. It swells in waves, kind of a sonic representation of a magic mushroom trip, almost dub. Even when they do get into the feedback & distortion it's not an abrasive noise, just another textural level.

Jim O'Rorke fits in well on guitar & bass, though it's hard to say what difference his joining makes to the music. Freeing up Kim to dance and play trumpet at the end was good. None of the guitar playing looks at all technically difficult, a lot of their unique sound is about using alternative tunings so they have five or six guitars each, and it's all about the overall group sound. They looked a little different from last time, Lee now salt & pepper haired all over rather than just grey at the temples, Steve actually less overweight than last time, Thurston finally starting to look older than 22 though not by much. He's fairly skinny as well as tall, and it looks great to see a 6'6"guy jumping around. He was climbing on top of his amp fairly early on, and towards the end he was wrestling with a guy who'd jumped up from the crowd - and grinning throughout. Kim's still the centre around which the others revolve on stage, though now that they're a five-piece she seemed to dominate less.

The concert was pretty much a pop set by their standards, heavy on songs from Sonic Nurse. They threw in a few oldies, 'White Cross' from Sister was a major adrenalin rush and served to highlight the differences in approach between their music in the 80s and now. Mostly they stuck to fairly short songs, no half hour 'Diamond Sea' type material which was maybe unfortunate. Also a year or two ago they'd been getting booed by audiences in Europe for playing avant garde compositions from their Goodbye 20th Century album rather than rock songs, but now they seem to have come out the other side of that. So Birchville Cat Motel was the evening's hardcore minimalist. Overall though whatever a band plays matters less than how they play it, and Sonic Youth were on form. They're one of the all-time great rock bands, what more can you say?

I made my own contribution to Auckland's cultural scene by playing at Vitamin S last night. I got thrown in with another guitarist and a computer guy in the first set, then with a drummer and two saxophonists in the second. Not earthshatteringly great I thought but fun. Free improvised music is always going to be disposable in a sense, there for the moment above all else. I don't think it was recorded so I'll never know exactly how it sounded. The locals were very hospitable with me the visiting dignitary - ha!

The downside of my stay so far, besides having burned through my savings (I got ripped off by the Kodak Express in Newmarket, having a car is nice but it needs petrol, and it cost me $61 more than it should have to get to Auckland), is that I've come down with a cold. Every cold has it's own distinctive style, this one's mainly about my nose and throat filling up with bitter-tasting histamine slime. Hopefully it doesn't get any worse. Have to see what I can come up with to fill in the next few days...

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Posted by fiffdimension at June 29, 2004 10:30 AM | TrackBack