At some point in our lives—usually when we are between the ages of 16 and 24—we have friends or acquaintances or co-workers whose entertainment views suddenly skew towards the obscure. Or, if they do not skew fully towards the obscure, they become arrested by the idea of finding different meanings in music or movies that lie a notch or two below the mainstream. Whether the object of these views or arguments is about Jim Jarmusch, Lucinda Williams, Chinatown, Elvis Costello, Afrika Bambaataa, Drugstore Cowboy, Charles Bukowski, or how big budget Hollywood movies are somehow killing our wills to live, the reality is that these people usually acquire these views out of a perceived necessity to discover “real” art—things not yet stained by the masses. It happens to guys more often than it does to girls. (And I confess that once upon a time I thought that Drugstore Cowboy was one of the greatest movies ever made. Now? It’s a completely average movie; it is certainly no Ratatouille.)
I bring this up because this post is about Sonic Youth, a band that over the years has been mostly defined by its resistance towards mainstream success, and whose fans can sometimes be described as those that would like to convince you that Jim Jarmusch is the greatest director ever, and that Lucinda Williams singing about a gravel road is transcendent. In short, Sonic Youth can look like a very cliquish and exclusive band. And so if you have never heard of Sonic Youth before[1] I am here to tell you that they are worthy of entrance into the rock Pantheon, and that if you prefer Top 40 over Patti Smith and Die Hard over Syriana you may even like this song.
“Teen Age Riot” starts off very drowsy for the first minute or so. The guitar sounds lackadaisical and Kim Gordon keeps singing lines like “You’re it” and “Spirit desire” randomly and for no apparent reason. From here the songs takes the shape of a normal rock song, complete with quicker riffs, a full-bodied sound, a fantastic break at around the 5:00 mark that features some perfectly attuned drumming, as well as some great lyrics from Thurston Moore (“Everybody’s talking ’bout the stormy weather/And what’s a man do to but work out whether it’s true?”).
To be sure, some of this song’s lyrics are indicative of the cliquish and the exclusive crowds (“It’s time to go round/A one man showdown/Teach us how to fail/We’re off the streets now/And back on the road/On the riot trail”) but it is the music that is the overwhelming star here. “Teen Age Riot” is a true-to-form (and somewhat structured) rock classic from a band that has a tendency to dabble too much within the domain of the unstructured. It is also a classic example of an indie rock song of the Reagan ’80′s: it’s angry, it’s sardonic at times, it wants the listener to re-examine their surroundings, but it ultimately offers nothing new.
Again, it isn’t so much the lyrics that make this song a classic—it’s the music after the 1:15 mark. It’s textured wonderfully, it’s loud, it feels new even though it is almost 25 years old. And it was cool enough for the cool kids to listen to while also being accessible enough for those of us who think Lucinda Williams, Steven Soderbergh, Elvis Costello, and Jim Jarmusch are grossly overrated.
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[1] Or if you have heard of Sonic Youth before and you have simply not liked what you have heard from them.
