Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising

Bad Moon Rising is an album of inspired contradictions. Chilling yet pastoral, artful yet politicized, it documents a band at odds with its own impulses and the culture that spawned them. You can hear Sonic Youth struggling to define their identity in a medium that turned its back on such pursuits long ago. The album closer, "Death Valley '69" (with vocal contributions from Lydia Lunch) is the group's most rewarding dalliance into straightforward rock to date and a promising sign of things to come. But the song is epilogue to a conflict between posture and innovation. Over the next three years--climaxing with 1988's Daydream Nation--Sonic Youth would pursue the latter of these impulses with peerless results. But Bad Moon Rising is arguably their first essential release. It marks a crucial turning point in the band's history--the moment when an experiment became an institution. --Matt Hanks Amazon.com essential recording

A new kind of dark

Now when we as a collective society anaylize horrendus acts such as the Manson Family murders, or those stories every town has but no one speaks about one must wonder why? This album answers that question to the highest degree. Its not about the people that commit the horrendus acts it IS the people that commit these acts that are protreyed on this album. It shows that society really is a hole, brave men do run from terror, and it does show that justice is might.
The intro is reminisant of Teen Age Riot isnt it? But if it is how do you explain the mysterious sounds that are underlying in the song. Brave Men Run, an explosion of fury as if they have just commited a mass murder of innocent people. Cool down be calm, no one will catch us right? Thurston backs this statement up with Society Is A Hole and then professes his love to her. Ghost Bitch, thats all she is nothing but a heartless sadistic woman but he dosent care thier on the road with two cohorts killing randomly. Thurston realizes he's insane and sprints through words..he wants to repent...Justice is Might he turns them in and goes deep in the valley. They escape...they exact revenge.
Now the music. Can this be called music? Droning feedback soundscapes. Utter beauty. The drone on Ghost Bitch has to be one of the best things Sonic Youth has ever done. Death Valley '69 stands as thier first real song. It has an actuall melody. Change...no wave to no limits. On Confusion it sounds like New York but Bad Moon sounds like everything west of the Mississippi. As if they're driving in a beat up chevy across the country. Kerouac meets Manson.
I highly recommend this to any casual Sonic Youth fan that wants to hear what they were like before the college radio frenzy over thier following three albums. Take the wheel and drive.... March 25, 2006

its the right time right place kind of thing....

first of all, youre not going to like this, if you just pop this in your car cd player and drive to work in broad daylight. its not for people looking for a catchy tune or pop song to get stuck in your head...its just not for that, if youre just getting into it. its an album that sets moods, many different moods might i add! ive gotta say, that this is one of my favorite sonic youth albums i have. its just something that you listen to (ALONE) late at night. it gets exciting, spooky, and thought provoking. to me music is supposed to create moods, and take you back to places you wish you were. now, im going to admit, a small part of the stuff on this isnt music, but it puts you into a mood all the same, just as any old song would.... sometimes "music" isnt nessicarry. i tell you, some of the stuff on this brings out stranger feelings than any "song" ever could.

its kind of strange, when youre in the middle of it, all settled in and stuff, the strangest things happen.... i wrote a wierd horror story to this music once... ive always thought it would make great music for a movie about kids getting lost in a forest on halloween or something! ah well, all im going to say now, is definentally get this album, but dont expect to love it if you a fan of sonic youth in their "dirty" era, or something. youre not going to hear that! with the right circumstances, you could become ABSOLUTEY obsessed with this album, as i did.


oh, and the five stars is for bad moon rising... NOT thet flower EP. its just not that good, and i dont think that they should have put the two together.... death valley 69 is the perfect ending to the album! the flower ep just kills the mood.... forget about it... November 30, 2005

Kinda OK at best

Sonic Youth had just finished Confusion is Sex/Kill Yr. Idols, the proverbial lo-fi no-wave dark gloomy strange noise album. They figured it was good so they kinda did more. For the first 4 songs, you'll be thinking this is a pretty good Sonic Youth album maybe on par with EVOL or Sister, perhaps not as good as them but pretty good. Ghost Bitch will start up and things kinda start going weird. This is probably the first song that largely falls into the category of "not really music". Death Valley '69 is one of the highlights as it actually is a lot like what you'll hear on Dirty. Then things start to suck. They really should have left the Flower EP off of this. Most people probably wouldn't have cared if the EP was missing from this album, plus then this wouldn't be yet another really long Sonic Youth album that gets boring towards the end (See: Confusion is Sex/Kill Yr. Idols, Sister, Daydream Nation, Dirty). It seems like EVERY ONE OF THEIR ALBUMS IS SOOOO LONG. Ugh. Anyway, Satan is Boring is terrible. Probably worst Sonic Youth song I've ever heard. Think typical noise with Thurston muttering some stuff. Flower basically is the same except Kim is doing the vocals. Halloween is also basically the same. Echo Canyon is also just noise. I'm not talking artsy noise here, either, which is what many Sonic Youth stuff is and it turns out pretty good. It's like turning on your radio to a blank station and just getting static and you can barely hear some other stations picking up. Just BAD noise.

Please, do not BUY this album. Have a friend burn it for you. Download it. Trust me, you'll be sorry if you buy it. DEFINITELY get EVOL and Sister before this, and everybody says Daydream Nation is really great but I kinda disagree but you'll probably like it so why not get that too. Actually, get 'Bleach' by Nirvana, then get 'White Light/White Heat' by The Velvet Underground. Pick up 'Land Speed Record' by Hüsker Dü in there somewhere, too. November 16, 2005

John Fogerty in hell!

This would be album #2 by the best American rock band of the last 25 years. Actually, you can even scratch the "American" part, since no band in the last quarter century has been as influential or innovative. Sorry, Radiohead, I love ya, but Sonic Youth are the masters. U2? Don't even get me started.

On second thought, the "American" part might be appropriate for this release, which is among many other things a quasi-concept album about America, at least in an abstract way. Most of the songs bleed into each other, giving the impression of something larger going on. That would be at once accurate and off-base. Sonic Youth are a close-knit band, so ideas get passed around like a virus. A couple of years later, they were all reading the same science fiction novels and the result was a masterpiece, "Sister." "Bad Moon Rising" wasn't a conscious attempt at a concept album, but since it could easily be mistaken for one, why not? It gives people like me plenty to blather on about. It also helps when they call the opening instrumental "Intro." The album in general seems to be a view of the Heartland from the point of view of people who moved to New York an escape from it. The title, which isn't used in any of the lyrics, references the famous Creedence tune and seems to be a dire omen. An oblique comment on Ronald Reagan and "Morning in America"? Perhaps, but Sonic Youth are too wily to make simplistic political commentary. The lyrics are impressionistic, from "Society is a Hole" ("...it makes me lie to my friends...") to "Ghost Bitch" ("Our founding fathers land rite down/& Indian ghosts from long ago/They gave birth to my bastard kin/America it is called...") to the Manson family obsessing "Death Valley '69." A general air of paranoia and psychosis hangs over the procedings, epitomized by a song called simply "I'm Insane." Musically, SY alter their clanging, oddly tuned guitars into amorphous clouds of feedback and static, swathing everything in ominous murk. It works brilliantly, creating an album that demands to be listened to in one sitting.

If that sounds all deadly serious, SY bring the ROCK like nobody else. "Death Valley '69" brings in guest vocalist Lydia Lunch (she invented Courtney Love) and tears the place down. You may find yourself singing "I Love Her All The Time" even when you're not in a drugged-out stupor, which is what Thurston Moore sounds like, but it's still tuneful in some bizzarro-world kind of way. Kim Gordon's bass line on "I'm Insane," along with Bob Bert's tribal drumming is particularly compelling. (Side note: this would be Bert's first and last SY disc before leaving to join friendly rivals Pussy Galore; their "Dial M for Motherf******" is highly recommended)

The Geffen reissue edition adds on some crucial non-album tracks. "Flower" and "Halloween" were originally issued as 12" single and only add to the mayhem. Sonic Youth created the sound that defined the underground scene in NYC's Lower East Side, and soon this comment on the Heartland would influence it, giving rise to great (if lesser-known) bands such as the Cows and Hammerhead. Even today, the sheer freakiness of on display here is a "Bad Moon Rising" indeed, but in a good way. November 2, 2005

The art of darkness, the contrast of imagination.

This is an album to listen to with your eyes closed. It's not the kind of record that you would sit in a chair and skip through certain tracks. It's a unity of atmospheric soundscapes. My favourite time to listen to this is when I'm lying down and feeling extremely relaxed and I can just close my eyes and leave this record transport my mind to places that are colourful and often deranged. I Love Her All The Time is a wonderful piece that breezes by in a smooth haze and it makes me forget that I'm listening to music. Thurston Moores poetic genius shines brightly on I'm Insane but unless you approach music as an art-form, you more than likely will just consider this record 'a load of noise.' It is much more than that to the open-minded listener. Ghost Bitch is a great blend of poetry and feedback that is led by Kim Gordon. The mid-section of this album joins together in one big section of FX pedal beauty and haunting guitar noises and is quite fascinating to experience. Death Valley '69 seems to be the most popular song on this album judging by the opinions of the majority who've reviewed this. It is quite a track, the trashy verse which is probably the most simple structure on this album and then the marvellous break which builds a huge intensity and captures a great haunting take on the well-known subject of the song. After this there is the first few seconds of silence which seperates the vibe of the original BMR tracklist to the added on Hallowe'en EP. The EP adds a nice coda to the CD, a collection of avant-garde poetic dronish tunes which are really great to listen to when you're in a zone of imagination and detatchment from the bore that is reality. I've given this 4 stars because that's what I feel it deserves. If I was to give every record that I loved 5 stars it would really be pointless to review records at all because 5 stars is more meaningful when given occasionally to extremely special records that are absolutely mind-blowing. Sonic Youth definitly have made some 5 star records. This is a really good album that is indispensable to Sonic Youth fans because of the fact that it sounds like nothing else they've put out and essential to music-lovers because there's a good chance they may approach music in a totally different mindset after hearing this. September 27, 2004

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