Peanut Butter Words vs Grand Illusions

Mike Powell and I graduate from pulled pork to Sonic Youth's Rather Ripped, on AIM:

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Powell: I see it as a kind of flipside to EVOL, though it's tainted by the fact that I fucking adore evol
Powell: but evol's this album about High Passion (shadow of a doubt, green light, even tom violence); but where evol's remainder was destructive, this one is sort of about peaceful liberation ("do you believe in rapture," parts of "turquoise boy")
Soto: It seems like RR is music recorded by adults who've experienced and thought through the merely received notions of passion (or High Passion, as you call it) which dotted those early albums
Powell: yes yes yes!
Powell: because you know what--I started thinking about this stuff b/c I was in a coffeeshop and PET SOUNDS was on, and I was thinking about that balance; the maturity/youth, passion v. teenage "bullshit" thing.
Soto: It's marvelous that "Do You Believe in Rapture?" is posed as a question. if the same trope was on EVOL it would have been a statement. They're adult enough to have realized that rapture is sort of chimerical
Powell: definitely
Powell: one thing I was noticing, speaking of phrasing: the important stuff in "Reena" is all posed as empirical observation
Soto: it does start w/out fuss, doesn't it?
Soto: we're hearing lyrics 4 seconds into the song
Powell: oh it's a great beginning
Powell: it's like, you wonder if somehow the first 30 seconds get cut off
Soto: and then once in a while ("What a Waste," "Incinerate") they do indulge in uncomplicated sex, because that's ok too.
Powell: right, the uncomplicated sex thing is fine, almost essential to the album – or at least being a little flip about it
Soto: "a little flip" – exactly right. It's bizarre. Usually a band dispenses with irony as it ages; SY have embraced it.
Powell: explain
Soto: Irony questions form – the way in which we formulate answers, even douts the way in which questions are asked. It's a REDRESS.
Powell: oh man you are trying to pull out my wires again
Soto: those early records were the sound of kids tripping on Manson and outsider myths. Their records post-Washing Machine seem informed by those myths; now they're asking if you can live your life (get coffee, get laid) with these myths which shaped your youth
Powell: I guess yeah, I agree with that, to a degree...
Soto: I think so. It's what they love about Neil Young: their work is a continuum. I still hear echoes of the old SY in this record
Powell: yeah I think I'm coming on to what you mean with the youth-shaping myth thing
Soto: "Sleepin' Around" is both a "dumber song" than "Death Valley '69" or "Green Light" yet is packed with wisdom
Powell: well, it's got more wisdom because it's probably the way a cuckold would really carry himself
Powell: when your girlfriend is fucking someone else, you are not thinking about feelings being "green lights" or any of that shit