Revisiting Sonic Youth's "A Thousand Leaves" (1998)

[xxxMidgexxx]

Their 10th studio album. Proper.
I bought it promptly when it came out on compact disk and I liked it fairly well, but we all have those albums which as good as they may be, get pushed to the side 'temporarily' because we buy a million records and don't have the time to listen to everything at once. Then we get distracted. This was one of those albums. Plus, in 1998 I was fully obsessed with house music and electronica...so there's that too.

It's as clean of a recording as the band had gotten to that point and there are still some very good dissonant improv jams on here like 'Karen Koltrane' and the lengthy 'Hits of Sunshine (For Allen Ginsberg) which I had a hard time in the beginning with because of a bad trip I had once. I don't remember if I liked 'The Ineffable Me' for a hot minute or not, but I don't like it now. One of Kim's most forced and annoying vocals. I like it much better why she sings and or whispers (ie: Tunic (Song for Karen) or 'Shadow of a Doubt'.

'Sunday' is a terrific Thurston song though. A beautiful vocal melody and guitar tones to die for. Same for 'Wildflower Soul'. Love it.

So yeah. Imma continue my re-visitation. Carry on.

[patient_ot]

Haven't heard it in years. All that later SY stuff seemed to get great reviews but I just couldn't get into it.

[gregpolard]

This one is interesting. Before commenting on here I wanted to play the album again. It really takes me back to my senior year of HS 98-99. The song lengths really intimidated me back then. Now, not so much. I pretty much agree with the OP as far as the standout tracks. I don't have any problem with "The Ineffable Me" though.