Regina Spektor |
Just when it seemed a sure bet that Joan Jett was destined to be the female Billy Idol – a commercial punk aging gracelessly in tight leather pants and a bad girl attitude that didn’t fit much better – Kathleen Hanna came along and held the head Blackheart up as the fiery fairy godmother of riot grrrl. More than a decade later, the buzz about Jett’s new Sinner (Blackheart) conveniently omits any mention of her embarrassingly oversexed 1999 album Fetish (Blackheart), which featured reworks of the Runaways classic “Cherry Bomb,” the Blackheart’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah!),” and a cover of “Wooly Bully,” along with some kind of bondage photo, a little techno-industrial production, and some silly-ass lines about rough sex. Sinner attempts to let bygones be bygones, even though it reprises a couple of tunes from Fetish. It’s being hailed as her first genuine studio album since 1994’s Pure and Simple, the disc on which Jett first teamed up with Bikini Kill and L7. Hanna’s back doing her sassy screamo thing on Sinner, and Jett sticks to those big, muscular guitars that have always served her well (except on a touching cover of the Replacements tune “Androgynous”). She’s also celebrating the 25th anniversary of her Blackheart label by reissuing two remastered classics, 1981’s Bad Reputation and 1997’s greatest hits set Fit to Be Tied. Retaining Gang of Four’s Andy Gill to produce their self-titled 2004 debut more or less insured that the Futureheads would be tagged as yet another post-punk/neo-new wave sensation. And the disc certainly did have its share of quirky dance-pop singles. For the follow-up, News and Tributes (Vagrant), it’s Blur/Doves/Depeche Mode producer Ben Hillier’s turn to move things forward, which means no novelties (like the debut disc’s playfully rocked up cover of Kate Bush’s “Hounds of Love”) and more emphasis on, as the Brits say, chunes. So far it’s working: the single “Skip to the End” debuted at the top of the British charts when it came out in May.
If it seems like it was just yesterday that the Futureheads’ fellow UK techno-popsters Hot Chip were coming on strong with, ah, Coming On Strong (DFA/Astralwerks), it’s because it was only last November that the synth-loving foursome’s debut hit stores here in the States, thanks the bright boys in the DFA. Apparently, it impressed the Astralwerks folks enough to get the band’ sophomore disc, The Warning (DFA/Astralwerks), into US stores before too many people had time to download the import. So they didn’t have to add three “bonus” tracks this time around to what sounds like the second coming of the Beta Band, albeit less skewed and more intent on proving that Beach Boys harmonies and drum ’n’ bass breakbeats are not mutually exclusive.
Back on US soil, the mighty Sonic Youth have parted ways, at least for the time being, with unofficial fifth member Jim O’Rourke, who’d been handling production duties and lending his multi-instrumental talents to the band. Perhaps that left Thurston, Kim, Lee, and Steve feeling like they had something to prove on their new Rather Ripped. But, as the title suggests, this is Sonic Youth really feeling it -- and by “it” we’re talking about whatever it was they were feeling on Goo. Not content to go longly and loudly into noise-rock jam-band obsolescence, they’ve pruned song lengths back to three minutes: a good omen.
Related:
Moore on the fringe, Night work, Controlled chaos, More 
- Moore on the fringe
Name-dropping has never been a favorite pastime on this page, but something came up in an interview I had with Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore last week that I wanted to pass along.
- Night work
Thurston Moore, Eddie Vedder, and Kevin Drew don’t play in the kind of rock bands that privilege streamlined sonics over the expression of individual creative wills.
- Controlled chaos
It’s 11 am on a Thursday, and Andy Moor is having his first coffee just a few doors down from the American Repertory Theatre’s Loeb Drama Center, the site that will be home to one of his most ambitious projects yet. The Ex, "Weapons for El Salvador" (mp3)
- Bob Mould
No surprise when you consider that Mould, along with Sonic Youth and the Pixies, was among the genre’s most influential architects as the leader of Hüsker Dü.
- Taking flight
“It’s that classic New England heavy thinking man’s rock,” is how Sonic Youth guitarist and Northampton resident Thurston Moore puts it. The Boston hit list: Ten local bands you need to see. By Matt Ashare More Thurston Moore: What a Sonic Youth guitarist does in Northampton. By Matt Ashare Black Helicopter, "Buick Electra" (mp3)
- Sonic couth
Music is more or less a mess of tensions. Deerhunter, "Wash Off" (mp3)
- Dropping by with an old friend
Even before there were festivals like All Tomorrow’s Parties to formalize the concept, Sonic Youth have always given off a curatorial air.
- Post-punk pantheon
They were, by definition, misfits.
- Cat Power
It may be her own fault, but Chan Marshall can’t seem to win for losing.
- Coverings
If the title teen of Juno can dismiss Sonic Youth as “just noise,” what would a representative of a generation for whom quiet is the new loud make of the even harsher sonic barrages of first-wave punk?
- Fallout joys
In his newly published The Sound of Our Town: A History of Boston Rock & Roll , Phoenix contributor Brett Milano explores the evolution of the local music scene.
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