In April of 2000, a Pitchfork contributor gave Sonic Youth’s NYC Ghosts & Flowers a score of 0.0. The album was an avant-garde exploration of weird guitar sounds and stream of consciousness spoken word lyricism. The author of the article later printed a retraction and noted how he’s come to love the album. In August of 2019, I moved to Brooklyn and attended a documentary screening of Sonic Youth: NYC Beyond. During the Q&A portion, I thanked Lee Ranaldo for attending and asked him what he thought of this incident. He thought it was funny…and warned, “Don’t believe everything you read.”
There were once a litany of independent blogs that covered strange music that wouldn’t drive clicks–and while they still very much exist, they’re underrepresented in an increasingly precarious media environment. We view this project as a return for form: to a time when we grew up reading a litany of mutant prose on even stranger records and musicians in publications that no longer exist.
Ghosts & Flowers, in this regard, is a testament to the weird and experimental, the off-kilter and underground, the forgotten guitar music and strange independent hip-hop of the vital and exploratory variety. We’re chronicling the echoes of an elusive age, hoping to inform and entertain, offer and recommend, and help craft a quixotic perspective and community that celebrates artistry, musicianship, and how strange it is to be human. Won’t you join us?
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