Interscope Records
2000
NYC Ghosts & Flowers
About This Album
Continuing their high-brow path towards avant-garde guitar music and away from their late '80s punk-influenced style of controlled cacophony, Sonic Youth have continued to make it difficult for fans to follow their evolving style of influential alternative rock. With the aid of renowned producer Jim O'Rourke, this iconic group has stripped away much of the murky sound that polluted its late '80s masterpieces such as Daydream Nation and Sister. This new style of clean production on nyc ghosts & flowers also differs from the group's early '90s sound partly attributed to Butch Vig on colorful albums such as Dirty and Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star, where Vig masterfully juxtaposed the group's knack for noise with his gift for salient production. Similar to Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star, Sonic Youth have again written a collection of shorter songs, focused primarily upon lyrics and song structuring rather than guitars. Thurston Moore's songs dominate this record, sounding unlike anything he has ever written. These songs seem to evolve spontaneously, moving into and then out of Moore's Ginsberg-like beatnik vocals. Songs such as "Free City Rhymes" and "Small Flowers Crack Concrete" sound like the music from SYR 1 and SYR 2 accompanied by subtly spoken poetry, focused more on enunciation than melody.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4 and 7)

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