surface the north wrote:I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but is there a clear distinction between Thurston and Lee's guitar lines on Sonic Youth albums?
Ever since Kevin Davis asked me in the guitar tone thread, I've been listening to Sonic Youth and thinking about it. My natural inclination is to guess that Lee can be heard on the left channel while Thurston can be heard on the right, but that's really just based on their stage setup. I also tend to think that Lee is, in a loose sense, the more traditional of the two players, but again, that's just an educated guess.
Over the years of fandom, I've never really taken the time to notice individual guitar lines in their songs. Most SY compositions sound like one big, layered, homogeneous animal to me.
Anyone have any solid details? Spenno?
You've pretty much figured it out.
From Dirty onwards (I think), they generally did mix Lee in the left channel and Thurston in the right. From memory, I think this was a result of Thurston listening to soundboard tapes of their shows on the Goo tour where their sound guy had mixed them that way (corresponding to what was happening on stage, obviously) and he liked it so much that he wanted the same approach on their studio recordings too.
The pre-Dirty stuff is less defined, so it's not as easy to tell. Since they're both playing in alternate tunings, and often notes in unison, it's not always easy to tell whose part is whose. I couldn't definitively say which bits are always Lee and always Thurston either, at least not without giving it some further thought and research. Their styles compliment each other so well in SY.
