Sonic Youth

The band's latest is chock-full of the noisy squall you've come to expect from Sonic Youth, and Kim Gordon's raspy diatribes are as pointed as ever. But it's when the group plays it (relatively) straight on tracks like "Unmade Bed" that Thurston Moore's relaxed vocals and jam-rock-via-punk-rock guitar attack soothe in new ways.

By Sonic Youth's own ear-shredding standards, Sonic Nurse is mellow gold. The guitar
feedback that has defined these noise-worshipping New York bohemians for more than
twenty years hasn't vanished, yet this is Sonic Youth's most accessible album since 1992's
Dirty. The skewed, groovy guitar riffing on Nurse cops the prettiness and chops of classic
Seventies rock, with multi-instrumentalist/producer Jim O'Rourke shaping the sp... More >

They'd rather be Coleman Hawkins, but their long-term consistency recalls less august precedents--say the Shoes, fashioning perfect pop album after perfect pop album in Zion, Illinois. Difference is, the Shoes kept it up for what seemed an ungodly long time and still got bitter and old in the span it took these citizens of world bohemia toabsorb Jim O'Rourke and continue the mature phase that began with Experimental Jet Set in 1994, just after they were a fixture and somewhat after they realized they'd never be stars. This unusually songful set is well up among their late good ones, its dissonances a lingua franca deployed less atmospherically than has been their recent practice. I like the lyric about the New Hampshire boys who live for Johnny Winter even if he's a no-show. Our heroes are so much more reliable than that. They can be Coleman Hawkins if they want. (Grade - A-)