My favorite moment from Sonic Youth’s bazillion-year history comes just after the four-minute mark of “Sugar Kane,” the third single from Dirty. The band has just launched into one of its trademark guitar-squall freakouts, one that starts off relatively linear and soon descends into near chaos before sputtering out entirely. We hear a few seconds of buzzing nothingness, punctuated by a few chords that sound just like church bells. And then a new guitar line comes in, this one heart-stoppingly beautiful, hovering like a butterfly, bringing the song immediately into focus. It always reminded me a bit of my favorite moment from Led Zeppelin’s history: “Whole Lotta Love,” after the smacked-out dub-noise middle section, when the drums and then the total-war riff come roaring back in. But it’s also the complete opposite of that Zeppelin moment. It doesn’t bring violence. It brings beauty.
Original Website: Stereogum