Record Review: Sonic Youth

Today’s brand new Metro Times has my review of the new Sonic Youth record The Eternal. It took a little time to grow on me, but I’m really liking it. Ever since 1992’s Dirty I’ve been waiting for a Sonic Youth record to come close to changing my whole world the way that record did. I’ve liked most of their input since, but I’ve yet to repeat that socked-in-the-gut feeling. Then again I was fourteen when Dirty was released, so it probably has as much to do with right-album-right-time as the record’s actual greatness. I always loved the cover of Dirty – I even had it on a t-shirt that I wore pretty much all the time. Also, according to my mom, the cover’s odd stuffed orange creature looks like a “crocheted uterus.” I think that uterus-as-craft-project is most likely outside the realm of most people’s thinking, but she’s a labor and delivery nurse and taught Lamaze Classes way back in the day. Growing up, we had a lot of pregnancy-related props around the house. I remember playing with both poster-sized pictures of fetuses in different stages of development and a pelvis bone model that we used to use for Barbie carriage rides. My mom didn’t actually own a crocheted uterus though – I think it was something she saw in one of her child birth technique teaching catalogs. So somebody, somewhere thought that was a great idea for a teaching aid.

I’m really looking forward to seeing Sonic Youth on Monday – I’ve only ever seen them once before and it was at Lollapalooza at Pine Knob and I just remember the sound being terrible. I had a dream recently that I was at the Sonic Youth show and Kim Gordon was visibly pregnant and flashing her vagina at the audience. I was alarmed, but then realized it was a pretend vagina she was flashing. So then I was like, “Okay, yeah – that’s fine. Of course she’s flashing a pretend vagina, like who doesn’t do that?” It was not a crocheted vagina though, as far as I could tell.