The 80s

As I've said recently, I'm gradually coming to grips with my birth decade- the 80s. Today I was listening to some more music from the 80s- Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth and a bunch of songs by New Order.

I didn't listen to all of Daydream Nation yet, but I liked what I heard. An acclaimed Sonic Youth release from 1988, it is a great example of the tense balance that band achieves between noise and melody. The first track, Teen Age Riot, begins with a lengthy and noisy atmospheric intro (a feature not too uncommon for Sonic Youth), but then moves into a relatively tightly written, hook-filled rock song, which seemed to me to be a precursor to the kind of sound portrayed nearly 20 years later on their recent album Rather Ripped, with its fabulous song Incinerate.

As for New Order, I enjoyed what I heard, especially some of their more guitar-driven work and particularly their second album "Power, Corruption, & Lies." A lot of their music is almost quintessential 80s synth-pop, which I'm still coming to grips with but am beginning to appreciate. I guess New Order is a good place to start since they apparently really helped shape the synth-pop sound of the 80s, yet they supposedly kept their post-punk and underground roots (they formed out of the post-punk band Joy Division) throughout their career (they became quite popular and mainstream in a way).

So yeah, that's what I was listening to today...