Music
Bad Moon Rising begins with "Intro," a short instrumental featuring several guitars, described by Michael Azerrad as “a melancholic, meowing slide line playing off a delicate stack of crystalline arpeggios.” "Intro" segues into the next song, "Brave Men Run (In My Family)," named after a painting by American artist Edward Ruscha. The song begins with a single riff repeating for a minute, before Gordon murmurs “Brave man run in my family/Brave men run away from me.” The riff fades into the album's third song, "Society Is a Hole," “a one-chord hymn to big-city anomie”. Sonic Youth's use of transitional pieces in the album was inspired by their live shows, which featured either Moore or Ranaldo tuning guitars for up to five minutes while the other played slow transitory guitar riffs or prerecorded sound collages.
"I Love Her All the Time" features extensive prepared guitar by Ranaldo and the use of one chord, with a noise section in the middle; like many of the album's songs, it focuses on texture and rhythm rather than melody. The second side of Bad Moon Rising, which comprises the experimental "Ghost Bitch" (which features Ranaldo on acoustic guitar and references Native Americans' first encounter with European settlers), "I'm Insane," and "Justice is Might," expands on the soundscape concept; the songs feature repeating guitar riffs that segue from one song to the next, while Moore and Gordon mumble cryptic lyrics.
Death Valley '69, the album's closer, was the result of a collaboration between Thurston Moore and New York singer and poet Lydia Lunch.
Read more about this topic: Bad Moon Rising (album)
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“The time was once, when thou unurged wouldst vow
That never words were music to thine ear,
That never object pleasing in thine eye,
That never touch well welcome to thy hand,
That never meat sweet-savored in thy taste,
Unless I spake, or looked, or touched, or carved to thee.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“O I shall hear skull skull,
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Believe music rejects undertaking,
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—Owen Dodson (b. 1914)
“It is hard to describe the thrill of creative joy which the artist feels when the conviction seizes her that at last she has caught the very soul of the character she wishes to portray, in the music and action which reveal it.”
—Maria Jeritza (1887–1982)