"And you want to get away Oh where to go to When you want to get it out Oh how to get through If you want to get it all You can own what you choose And you want to live a lie And love what you lose"

"I got shot right in the back And you were there I said I was never coming back And you were there you were there I know the eyelids are under attack 'Cause you were there you were there"

"Broken boys look good sitting on their shelves Silent waves responds expose to fear Library cards, rented faces, line up and make a train Hard parades with nothing skin Things that breathe way too thin"

"Market fresh Stand by me Where will it ever land Scar and stains, Emily Turn our little crab I could've meant it if you let me"

"All these people drinking lover's spit They sit around and clean their face with it And they listen to teeth to learn how to quit Tied to a night they never met"

"Heard about your wife and kids where we slept Felt their mouths with stitches at that were slowly lit Capture uniform this time because I couldn't quit Haven't felt the ground so cold without getting sick"

"I'm sitting cold There was love You loved him Take him Trust in you"

"You come in, check my time You got fornication crimes I've seen your hope on television Where you've been, wore my word They've got tricycles in skirts This is a mouth that needs religion"

"Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that Now you're all gone got your make-up on and you're not coming back Can't you come back?"

"Heart is pounding in his chest Reaches suddenly for his gun Ship is sailing in the west Flower that could be his fun"

"I'm just comin' here to come down I could be here I could move town Put my suits right on the guest list Saw my pa's boy Became weightless"

"You're like a missile kind Little kingdoms in your chest"

"Then when you let it You asked for nothing Why don't you share it"

"Sonic Youth albums aren’t as popular now as they were in the days of cassettes. That’s because now it’s a lot easier to say, 'Hey this song is going fucking nowhere, skip it.' Every single Sonic Youth song is a 'skip it' song. Every single one. Unless, of course, you enjoy hearing Thurston Moore sound like he’s dicking around with effects pedals at Guitar Center."

"To the extent that I wear skirts and cheap nylon slips I've gone native"

"Perhaps even more than Joni [Mitchell], trying to summarize the music of Sonic Youth with just one tuning is an exercise in noisy futility. The pioneering art rock outfit took advantage of countless unconventional and angular tunings through their run, frequently blending multiple dissonant tunings from different guitarists within one track. [...] The sheer multiplicity of tunings that Sonic Youth used caused all sorts of logistical hurdles for the band. They used cheap guitars that could only function in certain detuned ways and famously used drumsticks and screwdrivers on their guitars to achieve even more adventurous sounds and effects."

"Hailing from Long Island, New York, with noise rock stalwarts Sonic Youth, Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore sought to tear down the idea of guitar-driven music completely. One of many struggling bands in a busy NYC scene, Sonic Youth emerged as Greenwich Village darlings, riding to the top of the heap through a string of genre-defying albums. The pair's viewpoint on their instruments was fresh, vivid and untethered to all established norms."

"No artist did more for noise rock’s reputation — or for that matter noise’s reputation — than Sonic Youth. They brought it to a wider audience, made a handful of hit alt-rock singles out of it, crashed grunge as it was happening, and became a beloved institution, despite the fact that the bulk of their catalog features some pretty weird stuff. Throughout the ’80s, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo amassed an arsenal of cheap guitars that they modified and through which they employed bizarre tunings as well as techniques like playing the strings with drum sticks. Their noise wasn’t just unique — no other band could replicate it."

"It’s hard to imagine where we would be without Sonic Youth. It’s unlikely another smart post-punk band founded around the same time — Big Black, the Meat Puppets — could have delivered us from hardcore’s fury quite the same way. What would indie rock sound like if Sonic Youth’s sublime din hadn’t enchanted and derailed all the college rock bands of the mid-’80s? We would have only been left with a bunch of sanguine Feelies rip offs, never having the chance to divulge a crush via careful mixtape placement of “Shadow of A Doubt.”"