Teen Age Riot
The Eternal Youth. That’s the upshot of the cutely titled sweet-sixteenth album for noise-rock greybeards Sonic Youth. Now in their 50s, these icons of alternative lore are young only at heart, and on disc. The Eternal sounds like it could’ve been recorded at any point of the past 25 years. In fact, The Eternal sounds a lot like Sonic Youth's iconic albums of late-’80s.
The quartet’s first record since 2006’s Rather Ripped has a nasty streak to it. The band plays with a spirited sense of aggression, funnelling their signature guitar-sound —irregularly-tuned, strange-sounding, theoretically dissonant but chiming in all kinds of unexpected harmonies— into angular shapes, and oft-bombastic songs.
After the late-’90s found Sonic Youth forging into a sprawling musical tenderness —1995’s Washing Machine and 1998’s A Thousand Leaves, a pair of notably underrated albums— it was assumed Sonic Youth were working towards an autumnal period; a plaintive middle-aged melancholia in which their early screech would recede into slower, more serious, more contented works. Yet, after refocusing their attack on 2002’s Murray Street, Sonic Youth have been heading in the opposite direction.
Let's Dance in Style, Let's Dance for a While
The Eternal feels like a culmination of that feeling: a fierce, unashamedly rocking record. Though having their three vocalists —Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, and Lee Ranaldo— sing together on songs, even at the same time, is a definite new wrinkle, there’s an old-days familiarity to a song like "Poison Arrow," with its throbbing wall of intensely-distorted guitars, or the album's snarling, discordant, Gordon-barked opener "Sacred Trickster."
Saying it’s Sonic Youth having turned full-circle would be overselling that critical reading; this is, after all, one of the most singular, consistent, and unflagging combos in the history of independent music. But it is Sonic Youth sounding angry, aggressive, and, for the most part, direct. They sound —and could only sound— like themselves, but like an older model; the band they were when they were younger. It sends a message as stunningly simple as this record’s title: Sonic Youth, forever young.
Record Label: Matador
Release Date: 9 June 2009
