Quarterlifeparty

For this album review i turned to our in-house Sonic Youth ‘expert’ Casey Fighorn:

Sonic Youth’s fifteenth studio album — The Eternal — is their most rock-oriented in years. It avoids many of the noodly, free jazzy-pitfalls that seem to plague the majority of their post-1995 catalog. This isn’t to say that all of those records were horrible, just not really the kinds of things you listen to more than once or twice a year. The Eternal — on the other hand — is much more akin to the Sonic Youth you probably grew up with.  Some of the songs even sound significantly closer in style to Thurston Moore’s 1995 solo, Psychic Hearts record than SY songs produced at the same time as that album did.

The previous record, Rather Ripped was well-reviewed critically, and seems like a transition from the directionless droning of pretty much everything after A Thousand Leaves to this new record’s more focused songwriting. Kim Gordon sings more, Thurston’s songs are more focused and aren’t smarmy like they have been, and the record is just generally more listenable than things have been for a long time. I can’t remember the last time I listened to any of the post Washing Machine records all the way through after the first listen. This isn’t the case with The Eternal.

The songs are generally shorter in length than some of the more recent records’ tendency to extend needlessly, and while some of the songs are melodic — “Antenna,” “Malibu Gas Station,” etc. — they’re all pretty upbeat, and on average clock in at around three or four minutes, with a couple longer ones, but nothing like the ten minute averages of the past decade. Some of them, like “Thunderclap (for Bobby Pyn)” and “Poison Arrow” while not aggressive, are heavy in the way that Sonic Youth songs used to be. They’re noisy, and should be listened to with the volume way up, but not heavy in a Sunn o))) or Sleep kind of way.

Most of the songs sound like the “harder than hardcore” tunes of fifteen or twenty years ago. Pop oriented song-structures backed by those odd passages of noise — more like Daydream Nation, or Goo/Dirty era songs than what came after. That said, I feel like the Sonic Youth I grew up with has returned from a long hiatus, and that makes me very happy.

Stream the whole thing:

Related:

• Lee Ranaldo’s (Sonic Youth) Stolen Guitar?

Tags: Uncategorized , sonic youth