SONIC YOUTH – KOOL
THING (DGC)
In many ways Kool
Thing was the first Sonic Youth swing at scratching the mainstream. Now on a major label their music gained real
push. And the results were infinitely
worthy.
Kool Thing is an
exhilarating and pulsating jaunt. It is
also quite droll and surface sarcastic as the band exhibits an immediate
knowing on arrival at the big stage, the show.
This is a Kim song
with a message (as most of hers tend to be).
It came from an interview she conducted with LL Cool J for Spin magazine in which the pair clashed. Going into the interview supposedly she was a
fan but then it transpired they had nothing in common personally or
professionally. She liked The
Stooges and he liked Bon Jovi. She
was a boy, he was a girl. Then we really
went did it by stating “the guy has to have control over his woman”. Basically she could only conclude that the New York
The guitars are
positively tethered. In other words just
as they begin flying, a jarring tug on the strings is made creating a crunching
response from the guitar akin to a screaming animal. This is what makes the Sonic Youth sound so
inventive and uncomfortable.
With genuine bounce
the song is actually pretty breezy considering the aggression attached to the
lyrics and meaning. And when Chuck D
drops in with a few wise words heard by an indie audience he might as well have
been Louis Farrakhan. The conversation sculpted between them during
Kim’s spoken section is equal part awesome equal part cringe. That said her closing spoken declaration of
“when you’re a star, I know you will fix anything” is exceptionally sarcastic.
And with that the song
flies to an amazing climax. This is four
minutes of near perfection.
In addition to the
video featuring a purring Gordon looking alluring while playing with a cat (as
opposed with her original designs on dressing like a tooled up Black Panther), the
song both gained and lent real cred appearing in Simple Men by Hal Hartley. Arriving at the one hour, four minute and
forty eight second mark a frustrating Martin Donovan emerges from his
pick up kicking his baseball cap screaming “I can’t stand the quiet!” This leads to an internal shot of a bar where
first Elina Lowensohn
dances ferociously to the track as she is slowly joined by Bill Sage and Donovan followed
by Karen Sillas
and Robert Burke
as at that exact moment the coolest people on earth danced undisrupted
onscreen. Then one fast cut later the
same characters sit discussing Madonna
exploiting her sexuality in an exchange not necessarily essential to the
plot. This was it, as good as things got
in a superior era.
Remaining loyal to New
York the band covers “That’s All I Know (Right Now)” by the Neon Boys on the b-side as
they rev up early music and words from Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell.
Thesaurus moment:
imperturbable.
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