The front cover shows Lung Leg, in a still from Richard Kern’s notorious film Submit To Me, doing her typically fucked-up, possessed writhing. Kern of course had collaborated with Sonic Youth on the ‘Death Valley 69’ video, but EVOL, which remains my favourite Sonic Youth album beside Daydream Nation, is a much different beast than the obtuse Bad Moon Rising. It’s febrile, intense and melancholic. I love it for these reasons: beauty, danger and noise collide.
The softer moments feature Kim Gordon – ‘Secret Girl’ and ‘Shadow Of A Doubt’- and are elliptical and hypnotic, with piano and guitar pick ostinatos, Gordon whispering threatening things to lovers (“You kill him, and I’ll kill her” ) on the latter. It’s sexy and otherwordly. It feels like they set the blueprint for Slowdive, Curve and My Bloody Valentine, where sweet, ethereal melody was swathed in reverb and distortion.
Interesting dynamics were coming in. Gordon and Moore dispensed with gender stereotypes, in that she sang in a deeper register (on ‘Starpower’ and the two aforementioned softer songs) and Moore sang sweeter (on ‘Tom Violence ‘). Lunch and Moore co-wrote ‘Marilyn Moore’ together, which makes sense given the implicit female rage and terror expressed therein. Steve Shelley had just joined the band, replacing original drummer Bob Bert, and brought some punk aggression to inimitable closer ‘Madonna, Sean and Me’ aka ‘Expressway To Yr Skull’ which, as Lydia Lunch said on ‘The South Bank Show’ film, “sounded like storms, hurricanes”.
It plays the outro forever on the vinyl copy, until you lift up the needle, suggesting the listener is forever enmeshed in the chaos of the band’s world. The unusual tunings used by the band forever inspired Pavement and the debut release by Teenage Fanclub, A Catholic Education.
To me, it’s timeless. Gordon described it, perhaps only half joking, as their “goth album”. Maybe that’s why it resonates so much with me, all these years later. I think it is a masterpiece.
Hit The North 