Young @ Heart

I watched Young@Heart the other night, which is a documentary about the Young At Heart chorus in Northhampton, Mass. It is a chorus of senior citizens who do contemporary rock songs by the likes of Coldplay, Talking Heads, and Sonic Youth. The idea is that this gives the chorus members something to look forward to, and a reason to exist and feel needed and important. It's a pretty awesome documentary, and one of my favorite moments was when they covered Sonic Youth's "Schizophrenia." I wanted to post it here, but I can't find it online anywhere, so I'm posting the original song.
This was off of their 1987 album "Sister," and it is one of my favorite songs by them. It captures what makes Sonic Youth such a great band. It has a beat, it has a melody, and it then it just sort of devolves into this ambient squall. It's like they are deconstructing what a rock song should be, and then piecing it all back together in a way that works. They were all involved in avant-garde music in New York in the late seventies, so they take that approach to more conventional punk and post punk. Their earlier stuff is more experimental and noisy, but it was right around "Sister" that they started writing more melodic songs. They've managed to stay fairly interesting and relevent; I still listen to their 2004 album "Sonic Nurse" pretty regularly. Their new album is supposed to be black metal. I can't wait to hear what that's like.

Schizophrenia - Sonic Youth