Sonic Youth – A Thousand Leaves

This album really struck a chord with me when I first heard it. It came out in the summer and it was a hot day when I bought the CD from a record shop in Chingford. I remember listening to this album pretty much solidly that summer. Listening back to it now it’s a pretty far out record, I think. It’s definitely not one of their easiest, but it has these really beautiful, mellow moments on it that I don’t think they really hit at any other point in their career. It feels like the band had the songs but then just jammed on them until they found the best versions. Almost kind of Grateful Dead inspired, but with a mangled Television feel to it.

I went to see them live after this album came out. They played the Shepherd’s Bush Empire, and they had Morphogenesis and VVM support. Morphogenesis I can probably credit as being the first time I ever saw a large table of electronic equipment being played by a bunch of blokes. So they’ve got that to answer for.