Sonic Youth | DAYDREAM NATION (DELUXE EDITION) (GEFFEN)
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Earlier this week, for the third time in 19 years, Daydream Nation was reissued, and the new version is a “deluxe” double-disc set with a whole disc of bonus tracks. Sonic Youth are admittedly an archivist band and the album is undeniably a classic, but what’s going to sell this reissue isn’t the remastering job or even the stuff from the vaults. The real drivers here are the nostalgia of aging punks and indie rockers and the borrowed memories of kids born too late and hungry for a connection to that bygone era. It’s not hard to turn those feelings into money, but to trigger them you need a fresh product.
Accordingly, the past nine months alone have seen the release of a documentary about the glory days of American hardcore and deluxe reissues and reunion shows from Sebadoh, Chavez, and Young Marble Giants. Dinosaur Jr is on the road behind a new record, the reunited Slint is touring again–this time re-creating the 1991 album Spiderland–and the Meat Puppets, Afghan Whigs, and Slits have gotten back together in one form or another.
It’s easier to take comfort in the things that were meaningful to you in the past than to risk feeling alienated by the new, but you can sink into absurdity doing it. One of the two sets of liner notes to this edition of Daydream Nation is another dull procedural courtesy of the band’s friend Byron Coley (can’t they find some other chores for him to do?), and both his and the band’s remarks exude a wistfulness that’s alarmingly intense given that “back in the day” is only 1988. Sonic Youth waxing elegiac about a New York City littered with crackheads and burning mattresses, in the golden era before gentrification drove sandwich prices above five bucks, is just shy of offensive.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo by Amanda Decadenet.
