I will admit that I have not heard Sonic Youth's entire catalogue. I would like to, though, because I have enjoyed almost everything they've recorded from "Daydream Nation" until the present. Of course, this means that I have missed out on some of their best work, as I have long heard the praises of "Evol" and "Sister" from the die-hard fans. Their experimental stylings are right up my alley. There's nothing in the world quite like the sound of old guitars being tortured. Even if I'm not very enamored of Thurstoon Moore and/or Kim Gordon's vocals, the music usually more than makes up for it. They can coaxe sounds from those axes like noone else.They do a pretty good job of aural creation on "NYC Ghosts & Flowers", the sounds are alien and intriguing, but they never seem to find a decent chord structure to ride upon. The songs never seem to go anywhere. They start out pretty good, intriguing, they meander on, a few nice moments, but by the time they've begun to hit their stride they're over. When they build up to a cacophonous climax (as on "Small Flowers Crack Concrete") it just sounds like noise, a far cry from something like "Dirty Boots", in which the chaotic tension that builds up explodes into a beautiful, spacey conclusion.
"Small Flowers Crack Concrete" could be excused for all it's hubbub. There are some nice musical pastiches leading up to the tumult, but the "lyrical content" is little more than spoken word nonsense. The equivalent of a pretentious street poet at a Barnes & Noble open mic night. You have to wonder how it can be taken seriously. Even Jim Morrison's blank verse was better than this (for those of you who enjoy Mojo Rising's poetry, I aplogize for the slight, but hey, he was no Walt Whitman, was he?).
The title track is one of those that meanders and never quite gets anywhere. At the risk of offending any SY fan who may find more value in this album than I do, the vocal melodies and lyrics remind me of nothing less than Phish, albeit somewhat darker at times. Lucky for me, I doubt most Sonic Youth fans have even listened to Phish. I wouldn't listen it to myself if it weren't for the music, which is what I'm trying to get at here. The singing, lyrics and melodies, though they are surrounded by some fairly interesting musical noise, just sound silly. And the same goes for at least 85% of the whole album.
Gordon's "Side2Side" sounds like little more than a freeform word association excercise conducted over the sound of one pizzicato note picked on the bass guitar, which never lets up during the course of it's 5 minute duration. Kim reads a litany of seemingly unrelated words or short phrases (panned from left to right if you're listening on headphones), and the song joins the ranks of the other gloss that permeates this record. Sure, a few electrified ambience wafts about halfway through (about the time, I suppose, when most listeners would probably be reaching for the remote control), but by then the boredom has settled in and made itself comfortable.
"StreamXsonik Subway" may well be the worst song on "NYC Ghosts & Flowers", even though it, too, sometimes veers into promising territory. Moore's vocal melodies once again are the culprit. It's almost as if he's reciting a nursery rhyme here. When the first wave of vocals tapers off the band gets a chance to throw the sounds up into the air to see where they might fall. Almost makes up for the silly melodies, but then Thurston comes in again with his Mother Goose to close the song with a few more lines.
Ugh.
In my opinion the best song here is the opener, "Free City Rhymes". Very remeniscent of American Football, they make a very pleasing sound with their combined guitars. The vocals and lyrics are nice and certainly no harbinger of things to come on this album.
All in all, "NYC Ghosts & Flowers" is only for the hardest of hardcore Sonic Youth fans or completists whose only criteria for owning an album is the name of the band on the jacket (not that there's anything wrong with that...I'm that way about several bands). Everyone else is advised to pick up "Goo", "Daydream Nation", "Washing Machine", anything but this.
