Here’s a fun article that is guarenteed to piss off you irish cunts. “10 ‘Seminal’ Bands That You Say You Love but Never Actually Listen to and 10 “Irrelevant” Bands That You Never Mention but Listen to Every Day. From the always charming VICE magazine.

B00mb0x is very lucky to have been granted an exclusive interview with Jimmy Ali Khan, the crack three year old suicide bomber.

Bb: So Jimmy what made you want to be a suicide bomber?
J: They were asking in playschool what we wanted to be when we grew up and I was going say a fireman but my friend said it first so I said bomber. Little did I know that it was actually a Hamas recruitment drive.
Bb: Yes, but why would you want to do that?
J: They said I’d get twenty virgins in paradise.
Bb: What’s a virgin, Jimmy?
J: I don’t know but I think I’d like some.
Bb: You seem quite articulate for a three-year-old.
J: The kind people of the Isreali Press Office are helping me spell the big words.
Bb: Did you find your reddish blonde hair isolated you when you were, umm, growing up?
J: Yes, the other kids used to joke that my father was some kind of drunken Irishman but it only made me want to prove myself more.
Bb: What’s an Irishman, Jimmy?
J: I don’t know but I don’t want any.
Bb: What do you want to be when you grow up now, Jimmy?
J: A model.

In a way it’s like youth culture is corny and square and bubblegum and adult culture is actually kind of radical - Thurston Moore.

Thankfully they aren’t ashamed to speak like adults and wear it proudly instead of saying embarrassing shit like “Well me and Kim were hanging out in the crib blah blah” like they have on previous occasions. Sonic Youth may be approaching their fifties now (k, maybe I am exaggerating there, I’m not sure, but they aren?t that far off surely). I lost interest in the band since the unwieldy and over-cooked A thousand leaves album. Sonic Youth are a band I worshipped in my teenage years but I felt that there time had passed and worst of all just got damned boring and irrelevant. Thankfully, on my part, I was as wrong as Wrong Rick McWrong of Wrongstown, Wrongstylvania (who was very wrong indeed) as they have brought out an album that’s just as vitalic as anything they brought out since Daydream Nation. In fact, it’s the sweetest and prettiest album they’ve ever made.

The new album, Murray Street, is named after a location where one of the engines from one of the planes that crashed into the Twin Towers landed on Sept. 11 and where SY recorded the album. The street was sectioned off and the album was put on hold around the time. To name it (the album) after a street sign on a corner of our street, something so specific and reality-based, it was really sort of unorthodox for us. It was more of a piss-take on Abbey Road or Morrison Hotel. It felt right to us because that’s where we worked and lived for this whole record.

Jim O’ Rourke is an official member now. He’s this guy who’s this angelic pet, like a puppy dog who came walking into the studio one day and we all started hugging him. Ahh, let’s keep him. Dirty in ‘91 gave them a brief snook into the mainstream but this is even more surprising because I thought this band were more than happy to fade away into obscurity. They are a band that doesn’t even need to go pop as they’re on a major record label thats lets them to their own devices. I honestly didn’t think they would be capable of something like this as I had written them off as a band that had given up on the space rock of the 80’s and were more than content to spout beatnik poetry over half assed noise jams. Every damn note on this album just feels so on point I can’t resist. It’s got everything that Sonic Youth do best, those ambling blissful interludes, the off-kilter riffs, the psychedelic trippy noise and that slacker drawl. Theres a big nod to classic rock and it’s conciseness gives it the feel of a classic rock album. It’s very focused and theres more attention to the songwriting and when that noise burts in it registers better thanks to the neat, clean production. Lee Ronaldo’s always been a big Grateful Dead fan and Thurston Moore is a Television fanatic. Look at this list of their fave tunes from The Wire magazine for fecks sake!

15 Perfect Songs by Thurston & Jim
Styx - Grand Illusion
Supertramp - Take The Long Way Home
America -Sandman
Doobie Brothers - Another Park, Another Sunday
Gerry Rafferty - Half A Chance
The Damned - Help
The Groundhogs - Cherry Red
Patto - Man
Sparks - Thanks But No Thanks
Judee Sill - Jesus Was A Crossmaker
Whitehouse - Ass Destroyer
Catherine Ribeiro & Les Alpes - Libertes
Jo Jo Gunne - 60 Minutes To Go
Queen - Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke
Rush - La Villa Strangiato

It’s music that could be blasting out of FM radio but there’s always the subtlety and cats-cradle repetitiveness and pickings of ol skool Sonic Youth that makes this sound like the ultimate summer album for me. It just sounds so right. I don’t think they have ever sounded this perfect and oddly beautiful and alluring ever. Always the right sense of ambience, always the right sense of space and time, always clinching that right moment to burst in and make that music peek through the clouds. If I was 15 again, I know I’d fall in love with this band with a vengeance just like I did when I heard “Dirty” for the first time when I was that age. I couldn’t be arsed to go on about songs except that they are all fucking fantastic and as beautiful as a red sky at dusk although I think that the closing track “Sympathy for the strawberry” may possibly be about baseball player Darryl Strawberry. There’s a bit of useless info for you, you twat, happy now, hmm? If you love Sonic Youth, please take a listen to this and remind yourself of what you found enchanting about them in the first place. Album of the year. Maybe. I dunno. I’ve only just listened to it 4 times. If you don’t like Sonic Youth, you have obviously had your pleasure centers burnt off with a soldering iron and are some species of useless cunt. FACT.

Includes quotes from an interview in The Irish Times by Leagues O’Toole

Shera and co have been busy. Recordcamp version 3, featuring an interview with Warp records’ Plaid.

Soulseek is the new Audiogalaxy.