Light On Dark Water

Sonic Youth (Thurston Moore and Lee Rinaldo)

I'm cheating; this week's installment is actually two guitars. But I can't separate them–they don't alternate solos or anything like that, and they produce one sound that I doubt could be produced by either of them alone. Perhaps one of them is more responsible for the strangely appealing dissonance that Sonic Youth produces, but if so I don't know which it is. Apparently a lot of it involves tuning guitars in very strange ways (I mean really: GABDEG? GGDDGG?!).

The only album of theirs that I know very well is Daydream Nation, which a lot of people seem to think their best.  Here's the opening track, "Teenage Riot," which is pretty mild and tuneful, and allegedly uses the tunings mentioned above.

Somewhat noisier: "Cross the Breeze". The image there is the cover of the album.

And here is something from an earlier album, Evol (orthographic pun intended, I assume), which is perhaps a better example of what they were exploring. I'm not crazy about this track, but from the musical point of view it's very interesting. 

Whatever you think of them, it can't be denied that SY discovered some new possibilities in electric guitar. Personally I think their techniques are very expressive, and if I were a musician I would try to figure out a way to use them.