Like many Generation X music fans, I grew up on Sonic Youth and different forms of their white noise will be locked inside my brain forever. Those with remote knowledge of them must have heard countless times that they revolutionised the indie/ colleage rock landscape after the post-punk years.
I didn't join the party until I was 16. This was in the mid 90s when the UK indie scene was saturated with bands obsessed with them. This was a much needed antidotal reaction to Britpop. Due to their cross-generational appeal and a vast body of work, I continually discovered bits of their backcatalogue well into my early 20s and arrived at Evol when I was 20.
This is the SY record that I enjoy re-visiting the most. There's something remarkable about its woozy production. It sounds very mid-80s, not that you can categorically say what a mid-80s underground rock record should sound like. To me it's a mid-80s sound as it has a distant and detached feel, as if you are listening to a playback of compositions from a time in your life where you have fragmented memories (which I do as I was only 6 when the record was released!). It also conveys its era through its lyrics which are littered with popular culture references. I often think of Evol as the big counter-culture sound of rebellion against mid-80s American pomp - a time when the mainstream was overpopulated with hair metal, yuppies and jocks.
Evol also seems to hold a special place in SY's back catalogue which has become more apparent in retrospect. The record marked a new chapter for the band with an awesome new drummer, their embrace of melody and more conventional song structure. In many ways the sound was still there with the droning layers of static, hurricane like noise and chainsaw guitars. However, more colour was added to the sonic canvass. You still had songs which conjured warped images of Americana or some indie horror film, but this time it was in technicolour. Some of the songs were pretty catchy too.
This was also where one of the great indie trilogies began (Evol, Sister and Daydream Nation). But regardless of its legacies, simply put Evol is a frighteningly compelling place to visit.
I didn't join the party until I was 16. This was in the mid 90s when the UK indie scene was saturated with bands obsessed with them. This was a much needed antidotal reaction to Britpop. Due to their cross-generational appeal and a vast body of work, I continually discovered bits of their backcatalogue well into my early 20s and arrived at Evol when I was 20.
This is the SY record that I enjoy re-visiting the most. There's something remarkable about its woozy production. It sounds very mid-80s, not that you can categorically say what a mid-80s underground rock record should sound like. To me it's a mid-80s sound as it has a distant and detached feel, as if you are listening to a playback of compositions from a time in your life where you have fragmented memories (which I do as I was only 6 when the record was released!). It also conveys its era through its lyrics which are littered with popular culture references. I often think of Evol as the big counter-culture sound of rebellion against mid-80s American pomp - a time when the mainstream was overpopulated with hair metal, yuppies and jocks.
Evol also seems to hold a special place in SY's back catalogue which has become more apparent in retrospect. The record marked a new chapter for the band with an awesome new drummer, their embrace of melody and more conventional song structure. In many ways the sound was still there with the droning layers of static, hurricane like noise and chainsaw guitars. However, more colour was added to the sonic canvass. You still had songs which conjured warped images of Americana or some indie horror film, but this time it was in technicolour. Some of the songs were pretty catchy too.
This was also where one of the great indie trilogies began (Evol, Sister and Daydream Nation). But regardless of its legacies, simply put Evol is a frighteningly compelling place to visit.
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