In his book Gimme Indie Rock: 500 Essential American Underground Albums, Andrew Earles says that “To outsiders, neophytes and non-fans, the noise-rock subgenre of post-hardcore/indie rock appeared to be a rather one-dimensional, testosterone-fueled boys’ club.” That, of course, isn’t true - which Earles acknowledges. Something this violent and rude could only come from the good ol’ US of A. Noise rock’s sphere extended well beyond the shores of the United States and into Japan (the Boredoms, Melt-Banana), the UK (Mclusky), and Australia (the Birthday Party), but there’s something uniquely American about noise rock at the heart of it. And then of course there was Sonic Youth, whose own catalog is a noise-rock essentials list of its own, and whose album Daydream Nation just turned 30. Just as artists such as the Velvet Underground and the Stooges influenced what became punk rock, they played a similarly crucial role in helping to shape the mutants formed in punk’s wake: the primitive anti-music of Half Japanese, the brutal sludge of Flipper, the industrial grind of Big Black, and the heavy throbs of the Jesus Lizard. Their 1968 album White Light/White Heat became a template for later noise rock experiments, even its most melodic moments blown out with fuzz or engineered to disturb, like the sprawling closing track “Sister Ray.” As Jon Spencer declared on the Blues Explosion’s 1994 song “Full Grown,” “My father was Sister Ray!” The Velvets, founded by classically trained violist John Cale and professional songwriter Lou Reed, deconstructed rock music and cranked the distortion way up. While noise rock’s heyday was in the ’80s and early ’90s, exploding in activity and influence through independent labels such as Touch & Go and Amphetamine Reptile, its roots go back to the weirder sounds of the 1960s: primitive garage rock, provocateurs like Cromagnon and, most importantly, the Velvet Underground. It’s arguably an oversimplified, generic way to describe a style of music, but after decades of eardrum trauma, notoriety and musical stunts, “noise rock” speaks volumes. It’s not a buzzy catchphrase like “shoegaze” or “krautrock.” It’s simply two ideas smashed together - noise and rock, the marriage of conventional rock structures and melodies with the techniques of experimental noise music. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when the term “noise rock” was coined. That vile beast is the sound we now know as noise rock. Out of the roots of hardcore and punk slithered something much nastier and much noisier. Before noise rock had a name, rock critics such as Lester Bangs and Robert Christgau came up with their own suitably unpleasant ways of describing the tortured sounds of music oozing out of the American underground in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Seemingly every word associated with noise rock sounds incredibly unflattering out of context, and even in context doesn’t fare much better.
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