Sonic Youth and the Scientists, Enmore Theatre, 18 February 2008

I love calls like this on a Sunday evening.

“Dean, you school day weakling deadshit - wanna see the Scientists and Sonic Youth tomorrow night?”

It’s hard to refuse a sweet, eloquent backhander like that. My heart... let’s just say it turned to nine parts water, one part sand.

“The ‘Don’t Look Back’ series where the Scientists punch out Blood Red River and Youth play Daydream Nation?”

“Yeah”.

“Aww, I wish it was...”

“’Sister’? You music... snob. I’ll take that as a yes.”

Wow. My mate Pedro comes through again! Sonic. Scientists. Blood. Red. Daydream...

Something was firm in my jeans, and visibly buzzing.

“Leelee?” It was my flatmate. I mean, it was my phone...



Monday night flails into view as a packed Duke of Edinburgh and a schooner of Reschs greets me. Pedro’s been on warmup duties; his work is to be commended. A quick chinwag with Bruno Peabody and Clyde Hoodooguru, and it's into the early-thronging fray: straight into a howling, thumping wall of beautiful noise. The Scientists.

This is who Pedro has come to see (hence his pitching the gig to me as 'Scientists and sonic youth'). Taking our seats with tubes in hand, and it's hard to comprehend that the coagulated surroundsound din bouncing around the half full (and quickly filling) theatre is coming from four little specks on a large stage. One huge paradox struck me - Kim Salmon’s booming voice issues from a surprisingly small frame, howling its’ way out, forever front and centre.

Boris Sudjovic is scientific bedrock, pumping out stoner bass riffs that quickly take on a life of their own. Some masquerade as escaped elephants – riffs so huge that nothing whatsoever can reel them in. Set them free, watch them gallop. The drummer’s work can’t be underestimated: her Tucker-esque thump punches things through forcefully. With a dumbed-down ethos resplendent in this anguished, howling brew, overplaying would be a simple crime to commit. (Just like that sentence. Should take my own advice).

Put simply - this kind of drumming takes no prisoners, commits no crimes.

But for my mind it’s guitarist Tony Thewlis who’s running the show; his thinline telecaster providing the sting, the surf, the scree – the swamp. There, I said it. Swamp. But is it really riding a Scientists cliche, to call this sound 'Swamp'? For that's really what this music evokes.

Undoubtedly, there were highlights: the primal howl of ‘We Had Love’ and ‘Fire Escape’; a sinewy, lurking ‘Swampland’; ‘Solid Gold Hell’ and “Murderess In A Purple Dress’. But there were moments that weren’t, and it wasn’t down to the performance of the Scientists.

Though I’m not au fait with the original running order of Blood Red River, I wonder what impact the sequencing had on how cohesive the performance felt. They gave the live audience a taste of how Blood Red River could’ve been. Because they were presenting a work that was never fully realised as intended, we ended up with a thrilling glimpse of a great Australian EP, albeit slightly unfocused...


Compared, at least, to Daydream Nation.


The double album sprawl leapt to life tonight with infinitesimal focus. Sonic Youth could only conquer this album now. Only 25+ years into their existence are they able to become the sum of their influences.

Whether it’s the painting-thru-sound experimentalism of Glenn Branca, or the history of New York avant-garde music of the 1950’s and 1960’s as filtered through the no-wave aesthetics of the late 1970’s (all while bringing the strands of U.S. punk into play through the dynamism and focus of 80’s hardcore contemporaries), Daydream Nation presented itself tonight as their canvas masterpiece, one where every colour on their palette could be fully appreciated.

More than that; Daydream Nation revealed itself as an album with horizon-pinned eyes.

Sonic Youth's set tonight was an epiphany in that their influences formed an evolutionary continuum; the wave of influence SY once surfed is the wave they’ve since become. Their influences, their past - sum up to their present shape.

Of course, none of this entered my head the moment those lazy opening chords of 'Teen Age Riot' scrawled into heartshot.

I simply remember hearing sweet sounds and thinking: This is IT! An artwork reproduced, re-interpreted - all in real time! It was like being sucked up by a vacuum, into a vortex, and spit out into a wondrous space I knew would exist for the next 70-odd minutes.

Seven minutes will never be time enough to enjoy 'Teen Age Riot' live. But the moment the song peels back halfway through, leaving those swooping riffs suspended (ooh, still get shivers replaying the moment) was the first moment I lost it.

And I never quite regained it afterwards. Stumbled out on to 'Silver Rocket', which soon shot into ‘The Sprawl’ (sounding like a motorik blur, speeding through a cultural wasteland every bit as present now as in its creation 20 years ago). Steve Shelley's clipped hardcore drumming propelled 'The Sprawl' onward into the tugging, divebombing guitars of ‘Cross the Breeze’, and remained the pulsing hearbeat for the remainder of the artwork/album/performance/night (choose one).

The rest of the songs fed and swelled into an ecstatic skybound roadtrip for the next hour (take that as poetic license for ‘I’m too drunk by this stage to remember’), leavened only by the eerie postcard of ‘Providence’ – ghostly taped piano, muted feedback growls and distracted ansafone message giving the clue that perhaps a script was being followed, and stops needed to be made on this trip. There were songs in an encore, something I felt was superfluous, but for the fact the band played well enough to grace the audience with one.

Nevermind my encore gripe, though. No doubt you'll be acquainted with it soon enough. We slunk out of the Enmore, pretty well spent. And drunk. And grinning ridiculously.

“How was that, Pedro?”

“It’s nudging its way into the top 10, Hunters…”.

“Shiiiitt… No arguments from me.” We were reeling. Sonic Youth had conquered and far exceeded expectations.

Only beer and beer and Baileys (cheers, master Jimoir) could make sense of what we’d witnessed, and in quantities in direct proportion to the sense we needed. Of course, it all began to make more sense, and none.

But nothing made sense (or, more sense) by the time a taxi-chariot delivered me home. Apparently, I was too drunk to:

a) go to work the next day;

b) get in my own bed.

Instead, I hopped into my flatmate’s bed, mumbling and growling. I thought I was serenading her with an acappella version of “We Had Love”; Leelee later concurred - yes, I was completely unintelligible. Well, except for one word: “Sister...”

You can’t please some people.

HSL