‘The Burning Spear’: Thurston Moore’s favourite Sonic Youth track
Emerging from New York’s experimental no wave art movement in the early 1980s, Sonic Youth are now considered one of the most influential alternative rock bands of all time. The band reached their peak in the 1990s, following the success of albums such as Goo and Dirty, although they continued releasing stellar albums until 2009’s The Eternal before disbanding two years later.
The band formed after Thurston Moore moved to New York in 1977, eventually finding himself jamming with Stanton Miranda, whose band, CKM, featured Kim Gordon. Moore and Gordon soon formed their own group, performing under names like Red Milk and the Arcadians before choosing Sonic Youth. After playing Noise Fest in 1981, the pair met Lee Ranaldo, a member of Glenn Branca’s group. Moore was impressed and asked the guitarist to join Sonic Youth, and he accepted the offer. The band featured several drummers until they settled on Steve Shelley, a permanent member from 1985 onwards.
In the meantime, the band released multiple lo-fi records, including their debut album Confusion is Sex and 1985’s Bad Moon Rising. Although their noisy sound has always defined the band, these albums were considerably more raw and experimental than their later efforts, which typically emphasise melody more. Throughout the 1980s, Sonic Youth established themselves as vital voices in the underground scene, greatly inspiring Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, who was a massive fan. In Gordon’s memoir, Girl in a Band, she recalls how she felt “big sisterly, almost maternal” around Cobain, who, alongside his bandmates, toured with Sonic Youth in 1991 “before Nevermind broke”.
Sonic Youth were, and still are, incredibly loved and respected, partly due to their brilliantly innovative approach to making music, rewriting what it meant to be a guitar band. They were unafraid to mess around with unorthodox tunings, often using drumsticks or screwdrivers to play their instruments. In fact, when Moore was asked by GQ what his favourite Sonic Youth song is, he chose ‘The Burning Spear’, which demonstrates some of the band’s experimental methods of producing unique sounds. Moore shared, “That was the first song we had, and a lot of it was predicated on having a drumstick beneath the strings at the 12th fret and hammering it with another drumstick, but in a moderate way that made a charming sound. Lee also used an electric drill, so it had all this going on, but it was still a proper song.”
Moreover, the guitarist and vocalist explained, “It has a bit of a dub reggae aspect to it with the bass and drums, and the fact that it was called the ‘The Burning Spear’ was sort of honorific to the great reggae artist Burning Spear.”
Listen to the track below.
