Sonic Youth

The band's record from 2000 is more of their expertly crafted hipster jam/skronk rock and beatnik free-association lyrical gambles (most about New York). This, as with many of their recent records, is quite good yet lacks a defining pull that causes it to cross the line and become great. But still, a decent Sonic Youth record is better than most.

Even after two decades of subversive guitar glory, Sonic Youth take nothing for granted --
especially their guitars. To them, their axes are still new instruments, hunks of wood and
wire with limitless potential. NYC Ghosts and Flowers finds the quartet exploring rock's
outer limits with renewed zeal. The album expands on the autumnal pensiveness of 1998's
A Thousand Leaves. Traditional song structures are tossed out with yesterday's... More >

Maybe the trauma of guitar loss jolted them past songform, or maybe they're acting out with David Geffen gone bye-bye. Either way this impressionistic poetry-with-postrock is the most avant-sounding of their DGC-etc. product, and either way its avant parts are more listenable--nay, beautiful-t-han anything on Washing Machine if not A Thousand Leaves. Songform guy that I am, it put me off at first. But heard refracting the dusk on the Taconic Parkway or spattering through the rain on Second Avenue, its refusal to distinguish between abrasive and tender or man-made and natural is a compelling argument for their continuing to do whatever they damn well feel like. (Grade - A)