Sonic Youth Back in the Studio, Close to Signing With New Label

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For the first time in eighteen years, Sonic Youth are a full-fledged indie-rock band again. After completing their contract for longtime major label Geffen Records with the release of 2006's Rather Ripped, the group will release their next record on an indie label, Thurston Moore tells Rolling Stone. "There's one label we are certainly going to go with at this point," he says. "But I don't think I'm allowed to disclose that right now. I don't want to risk having a shit storm." Moore does reveal, however, that Sonic Youth are currently in the writing-stage of their next album. In November, they'll hit the studio to cut tracks, with the goal of releasing the disc sometime next spring. "I've written a half-dozen song ideas," he says. "I try not to complete them so much. Last time we got together, we were creating sort of new band-zone-vibe sort of things." As for returning to the indie world again, Moore is psyched. "It feels great," he says. "The last four or five records we did were just so compromised by that [major label] situation. But that's the way it goes." Moore will play his Psychic Hearts album in its entirety at All Tomorrow's Parties, the September 19-21st festival at Kutsher's Country Club in Monticello, New York where My Bloody Valentine will be performing their first U.S. shows in more than a decade.

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Song Stories

“Everyday People”

Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

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