My Top 1000 Songs #790: Sugar Kane

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

By 1992's Dirty, Sonic Youth were a couple albums into their surprising major-label run, with no signs of making any commercial concessions. (In other words: damn, what a solid LP!) Still, "Sugar Kane" did an impressive job of adding just a bit of studio polish to their noisy experimentation without losing a drop of magic. It's a compelling riff-rocker, the driving verses pivoting into some phenomenal guitar dynamics in the hum-along chorus, but still takes time for a feedback-drenched breakdown in the middle before returning to earth. Structurally, it feels like one of their most "conventional" rock & roll songs, well-designed for alt.rock radio (ok, maybe not the noisy bridge), yet still distinctively Sonic Youth.

The album came out nearly a year into my grown-up life (i.e. post-law school), just after I moved into an old Victorian in San Francisco, and "Sugar Kane" (along with the comparable but faster-paced "Purr") still captures the vibe of a hyper-specific moment in time for me, a song I could crank up on my Walkman while commuting to work yet still feeling the connection to my college years.
Live:


Comments