Daydream Nation
Daydream Nation is the fifth studio album by American alternative rock band Sonic Youth, released on October 18, 1988. The band recorded the album between July and August 1988 at Greene St. Recording in New York City, and it was released by Enigma Records as a double album.
For the film, see Daydream Nation (film).Daydream Nation
After Daydream Nation was released, it received widespread acclaim from critics and earned Sonic Youth a major label deal. The album was ranked high in critics' year-end lists of 1988's best records, being voted second in The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop poll. Daydream Nation has since been widely considered to be Sonic Youth's greatest work, as well as one of the greatest albums of all time,[1][2] specifically having a profound influence on the alternative and indie rock genres. It was chosen by the Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Recording Registry in 2005.[3]
Writing and recording[edit]
Sonic Youth's standard songwriting method involved Thurston Moore bringing in melody ideas and chord changes that the band would spend several months fashioning into full-length songs. Instead of paring the songs down as the group did with previous records, the months-long writing process for Daydream Nation resulted in long jams, some lasting over half an hour. Several friends of the band, including Henry Rollins, had praised the band's long live improvisations and told the group that its records never captured them. With Moore on a writing spree, the album ultimately had to be expanded to a double album.[4]
Sonic Youth recorded Daydream Nation at New York's Greene Street basement studio. The studio's engineer, Nick Sansano, was accustomed to working with hip hop artists. Sansano did not know much about Sonic Youth, but he was aware the band had an aggressive sound, so he showed the band members his work on Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" and Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock's "It Takes Two". The group embraced the sound of the records.[5] Sonic Youth booked three weeks of recording time at Greene Street's Studio A, starting in mid-July 1988. The band paid $1,000 per day of studio time, which was the most they had paid to record an album up to that point.[6]
Due to the amount of preparation the band put into composing its music, the recording process was efficient.[7] The session became rushed near the end, when Paul Smith, the head of the band's British label Blast First, had set a mastering date of August 18. As a result of the time pressure, Kim Gordon was not happy with some of her vocal takes. The band spent a whole night creating a final mix for the three-song "Trilogy" so it could be mastered the following morning. The record ultimately cost $30,000, which led Moore to refer to the album as "our first non-econo record".[8]
Music and lyrics[edit]
Daydream Nation is generally considered an avant-rock, alternative rock, indie rock, art punk, and post-punk album, with the record being notable for its unorthodox guitar tuning and song structure, with many songs concluding with
lengthy instrumental sections. The album is especially notable for being a significant influence for later alternative and indie rock efforts and genres, including well-known grunge band Nirvana. Lyrics include topics of burnout, the music industry, and the crack epidemic of the late 1980s.
"The Sprawl" was inspired by the works of science fiction writer William Gibson, who used the term to refer to a future mega-city stretching from Boston to Atlanta (specifically from the Sprawl Trilogy). The lyrics for the first verse were lifted from the novel The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson.[9] "'Cross the Breeze" features some of Gordon's most intense singing, with such lyrics as "Let's go walking on the water/Now you think I'm Satan's daughter/I wanna know, should I stay or go?/I took a look into your hate/It made me feel very up to date". "Eric's Trip" has lyrics pertaining to Eric Emerson's LSD-fueled monologue in the Andy Warhol movie Chelsea Girls.[10]
"Hey Joni" is titled as a tribute to rock standard "Hey Joe" and to Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell.[11] It is sung by Ranaldo, and has surrealist lyrics such as "Shots ring out from the center of an empty field/Joni's in the tall grass/She's a beautiful mental jukebox, a sailboat explosion/A snap of electric whipcrack". This song also alludes to the works of William Gibson's Neuromancer with the line "In this broken town, can you still jack in/And know what to do?" These feature similarly on Ranaldo's two other songs on the album, the rarely played "Rain King"—an homage to Pere Ubu and perhaps Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King—and the aforementioned "Eric's Trip".
"Providence" consisted of a piano solo by Moore recorded at his mother's house using a Walkman, the sound of a Peavey Roadmaster amp overheating and a pair of telephone messages left by Mike Watt, calling for Moore from a Providence, Rhode Island payphone, dubbed over one another.[12]
The title of "The Wonder" comes from crime fiction writer James Ellroy's phrase about the ineffable mystery at the heart of Los Angeles; in Moore's words, "the wonder" is what "for better and worse, inspires [Ellroy] to keep going, to get out of bed every day."[13] The closing track "Eliminator Jr." was inspired by the "Preppie Killer", Robert Chambers. It was thus titled because the band felt it sounded like a cross between Dinosaur Jr. and Eliminator-era ZZ Top. It was given part "z" in the "Trilogy" both as a reference to ZZ Top and because it is the closing piece on the disc.[14]
Release and promotion[edit]
Daydream Nation was released on October 18, 1988,[19] in compact disc, cassette and double vinyl formats.[20] It did not chart in the United States, but reached No. 99 on the British albums chart.[21] Three singles with accompanying music videos were also released: "Teen Age Riot" (in 1988 on 12-inch vinyl and CD),[22] "Providence" (in the United Kingdom in 1989),[23] "Candle" (October 1989 on 12-inch vinyl),[24] and a live version of "Silver Rocket" for subscribers to Forced Exposure.[17][25] The song "Teen Age Riot" was popular on alternative radio and reached No. 20 on Billboard's newly created Modern Rock Tracks chart.[26] Sonic Youth also promoted the album with a North American tour from October to December 1988, concentrating almost exclusively on material from the album. In 1989, they took the tour to New Zealand, Australia, Japan, the USSR and Europe, finishing the year with their first network television appearance—on the syndicated Night Music—playing "Silver Rocket".[17] In 2007 they played the album live as part of the Don't Look Back concert series, and then toured with it through Europe and Australia into 2008.[17][27]
Bibliography