EVOL (1986)

This first came into my life as vinyl and at least one side had a lock groove. I always wondered how they were going to replicate that on CD. Well, of course they couldn't. I suppose there's a way you might manage it with digital but it would probably just be annoying. It was kind of annoying anyway, but also cool. This is about where that started with Sonic Youth, operating on pure instinct and making it work. Noise is deployed liberally throughout, of course, and say hello to the tunings, but what counted for me was that overnight they had given in to an unsuspected knack for melody. In general, the proceedings here, however discordant, are far closer to gentle and allusive than thundering. I'm still trying to figure out the Hitchcock reference, wherein the plot to one Alfred Hitchcock movie (Strangers on a Train) is recounted under the title of another (Shadow of a Doubt), kind of. Those are two of Hitchcock's best, by the way, from his overlooked late '40/early '50s period. It's like they knew.