There’s no such thing as an album that’s a perfect 10 – but there those that are one notch below. The 9’s is an occasional series which explores some of those records.
Released: 1988
About
Moving labels can lend a band wings or tempt them to consolidate; in the case of Sonic Youth with Daydream Nation they did both, spectacularly. There had been a sense on it’s predecessor Sister (1987) that they were open to remoulding themselves musically, but here compromises, even to a generation of more open minded listeners they’d grown up with were fierce and hard won. On the flip side a seventy minute double album gave their ideas room to breathe, and the glut of material served to confirm that the Thurston Moore/Kim Gordon/Lee Ranaldo trifecta was a writing axis that had come of age.
Why a 9?
By the time it arrived there was a functional and for the insider at least highly organised coast-to-coast American underground, one that had began in tape swapping networks and evolved through college radio and like minded promoters. The quintet did much to foster this scene – although mostly on their own terms – but that Daydream Nation almost single handedly dragged it to another level is undeniable. For a record wrongly perceived as some kind of tilt at the mainstream it’s wonderfully weird; the closing triptych’s unwillingness to come for up air thrills, whilst The Sprawl, Total Trash and ‘Cross The Breeze still filtered No Wave through their own peculiar lens. Teen Age Riot by contrast should’ve defined them, at least in this period; it’s to their eternal credit that it never stood a chance of doing that.
Why Is It Important?
It’s argued that without Daydream Nation‘s bricolage of scuzzy art rock, nihilistic post-hardcore and glimpses of melody that <<insert name of movement>> wouldn’t have happened, but the reality is that it stands for something different to the likes of Bug, Surfer Rosa or 13 Songs, a catalyst by accident rather than determination. Omnipresent as Thurston Moore freely admitted was the presence of antecedents like Suicide, Television and in particular The Velvet Underground; the fifth Beatle though was the intangible fuck you of New York, a something that whatever followed would always lack.
You Should Listen To
Teenage Riot, ‘Cross The Breeze, Total Trash, The Sprawl
The Voice Of Unreason 