Customer Reviews

Whitey Album (Reis)

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this in seventh grade knowing that it was a Sonic Youth album, but I had no idea that it was going to be so weird. The bizarre drum machines and Madonna covers left me confused, but I kept listening because I loved how unusual it was. It's six years later and now I think it's one of my favorite albums, totally unlike anything else the band has ever done. There's definitely a lot of humor on the album, but the first side is pretty frightening, particularly the atmospheric the band creates on "Platoon" and "Macbeth". But I think the humor combined with the darkness is the album's strong point. Poetry, rap, bad new wave, Robert Palmer, Neu!, stark instrumentals, and of course Madonna join forces to make a real doozy of an album, full of beautiful moments. A must for any Sonic Youth fan or anyone willing to try something new (even when it's 13 years old.)

p.s. the wonderful Mike Watt sings lead on Burnin' Up.

when i first heard about this album, i thought it might be somewhat interesting. sonic youth forsaking raw power for electronic beats. the more i thought about it and listened to their other albums, the more intriguing it became. finally i bought it, because the store was out of sy's debut album. it was a trip, to say the least. it started out with an all percussion track. is it electronic, acoustic, or a combination of both? i never really considered it while listening to it. the next track was silence. kind of gives you an opportunity to think about the onslaught of the first track, which until then seemed like... something. whatever it is, it just seems more clear. then kim gordon fades in, ranting about whatever it is that she rants about. sexism, violence, love, something along and eclipsing those lines. macbeth is just crazy. hi! everybody lies somewhere between frank zappa and disco. two cool rock chicks is conversation and then a j mascis guitar solo. is there really anything more one needs than that? mike watt does a deep-voiced, laid-back version of madonna's "burnin' up" and is enough to make anyone question how evil pop music really is. thurston moore does something similar with "into the groovey", using samples from the original version. kim gordon, too, shows her pop side on her karaoke version of "addicted to love". steve shelley finally proves the existence of his vocal cords on his reading of lee ranaldo's "me & jill". "making the nature scene" was taken further than anyone ever could have imagined after the forceful version on the "confusion is sex" album. this doesn't really explain the album, but that's why people listen to music rather than just read reviews.

The Whitey Album is definitely my most favorite and apparently sought after music selection. I heard it at a friend's house this summer and have wanted it in my music library ever since. There are some familiarities in the retro-80s-flashback songs. "Addicted to Love" is one of the best 80s covers I've heard yet. It's fun, laid back and all together a well done collection of sounds. Like I said, I give it 5 stars. *****

This is recording that is well grounded in eighties pop culture, yet still sounds avant-garde. The Album is full of Sonic Youth's trademark feedback-drenched explosions of noise and beat-inspired poetry, yet this is unlike any other SY recording. Not only do most of the songs involve a beatbox and samples, there are even Madonna and Robert Palmer covers!

Humor and irreverence combines with an anything-goes approach the song structures. It sounds like the band is having a lot of fun, and that energy passes to the listener. An added bonus is the guest appearances of Mike Watt and J. Mascis.

Released around the time of Sister, this album is a glorious companion-piece to that other SY classic. If you don't own this yet, you should!

I just picked this little gem up for 50 cents at a thrift store. Wow...Great, Ultra-creative and sublime, I would buy this thing if it were $50

I love this album!

It's probably the only album in my record collection that finds it's place wether I'm in a Pop, Punk, No-wave, Electronic, or Urban mood or when I'm just sick and overloaded with American society.

This album is an exorcism of American culture in the 1980s and is still relevant to todays times. The destructive force of George W. Bush and the brainless celebrities we're bombarded with daily, who eat away our brains as G.W.B. eats away our lives and our civil liberties, all the while we witness the worst disasters in history, are akin to Ronald Reagan and America's obsession with Dynasty and Dallas while nearly an entire population of creative people die of AIDS and the worst plague of world hunger in history wipes out 35,000 people a day.

The contrasts that people point out, "the darkness and Pop irony" make this album such a great document of the underground. Never forget that Madonna started out in a Punk/New Wave band (The Breakfast Club) and was a part of the early Hip-Hop and Club scenes that many NY Punks were going to. The underground in the 80s was a melting pot of styles and scenes all effecting each other through music, performance, art and fashion.

Instead of being phony purists of Avant-Garde taste, like most NYC Hipsters were and are, stepping in line to the same definition of "Cool", Ciccone (Sonic) Youth are honest about their appreciation and disgust with pop culture and express what it feels like to be an informed, creative and individualist person finding that you actually do like Madonna and in a cold, minimalist way the Robert Palmer girls are actually quite bizarre, like something from a Kraftwerk or Klaus Nomi performance.

So, to sum this up. If you find your sick of the monotonous goose-step of indi./alt./underground music these days, crank this up, turn up the bass and excorscise your Mtv induced/social crisis/media disease demons.

Michael Martarano

Length:: 1:08 Mins

Listening to this thing I was made aware that some music, progressive or by whatever name, has a tendency to wake you up and increase one's awareness of what is going on musically. This is stuff that doesn't lull me into some sense of the infinite. Its bizarre mash up of '80s something or other, rock and ambient adventures wakes me up, increases my awareness of the music among other things like a good shot of coffee. Now that can be a good thing or really annoying. The Whitey album is both, but the cool outweighs the irritating. I suppose one can say the music is dated and yes, "Addicted To Love" sucks, albeit in an amusing way, but a lot of whats here is really interesting, especially the instrumental bits. This is Sonic Youth and Watt stretching out and having some fun, indulging their most arty aspirations while sometimes "taking the piss" circa the late 1980s. But it isn't an album I can sit through all at once. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

This album has always been a great companion for "Daydream Nation," and the band had actually wanted the two records be released simultaneously. Someone close to the band wisely encouraged them to release "Ciccone Youth" a few months later so as not to detract attention from their masterpiece, "Daydream Nation."

But that doesn't mean "Ciccone Youth" isn't a masterpiece in its own right. It's simply a much more playful recording, being, in its own strange way, a tribute to Madonna (though only two Madonna songs are actually covered, one by Sonic Youth, and one by Mike Watt of the Minutemen, by himself). In one sense, especially in this rerelease version with the extra tracks, this album is more "traditional" Sonic Youth than "Daydream Nation" simply in the sense that it is far noisier. In another sense, however, it is unlike anything by them, as there is an emphasis in various songs on dance rhythms and sound manipulations.

If you're primarily a fan of earlier, darker Sonic Youth releases, don't be scared away by the term "dance rhythms." Just listen to a sample of the sludgy version of "Into the Groove(y)" to understand how Sonic Youth uses, and undermines, dance rhythms, on this record. On the occasions in the record when they employ such rhythms, they appear to be both mocking and embracing pop culture at the same time, something for which they are uniquely suited.

All in all, one hell of an album.

you can pick this and other rare sy albums at downtown music gallery off their website. as far as the music on this release,it's the usual sy fare and pretty darm good!