The Sprawl

The 3rd song on Daydream Nation is called "The Sprawl."

There are two kinds of Sonic Youtn fans, those that love Daydream Nation and those that think its too long and drags. "The Sprawl" is easily the song that gives the listener the "drag" red flag. After the high powered "Teenage Riot" and sonic-punk "Silver Rocket," The Sprawl takes a nose dive in tempo, clocks in at over 7 minutes, and features 3 minutes of an instrumental outro. Sonic Youth is showing no signs of slowing down if you can make it past this song. It has its finer points. When the band set out to "extend" their jams and songs, the Sprawl HAD to be one of the forst songs set in that direction. Although the track has a "free flowing" feel, it is highly orchestrated and resembles the wall of noise we once loved from the Confusion Is Sex era.

The song features a chorus that repeats in the same place. A veyr pop type attribute for a song of this type."Come on down to the store, you can some more." The rest of the vocals feature a typical sonic youth style of "spoken" word singing. The lyrics sound simple and improvised, in fact they more than likely were even though some of the lyrics were taken and inspired by "The Stars At Noon by Denis Johnson. Favorite line "does this sound simple enough? fuck you! does fuck you! sound simple enough?"

The loose outro is what feels as if the song drags. The layered guitars playing the same drone over and over seem to go on and on until it melts into the next track....then things pick up....

"The Sprawl" ws debuted with the rest of the record in 1988. It was played nightly during the '88-'89 tour but layed to rest until 2007 with the re-release of Daydream Nation.

video to come....