Like artists as disparate as Woody Allen, the Coen Brothers and Neil Young, each new opus from Sonic Youth is greeted with unyielding enthusiasm from the group’s fans (of which this hack considers himself a steadfast member), whilst the verboten thought, “Are they actually still as good as they used to be?” lurks forebodingly at the back of our collective minds.
It might be age, it might be entropy, or it may be some other as yet undefined law of physics, but for whatever reason, whether it’s a football team, TV programme or rock group, even the most durable of pop-cultural icons have a habit of reaching that stage of inert uniformity where all creative options seem more or less exhausted, and all forward momentum seems lost.
Ten years on from what many critics consider to be the band’s career apex – the era of down ‘n’ Dirty, Butch Vig-facilitated crossover appeal and Kurt-ordained, alt.rock godfathers-status – the Youth are certainly unlikely to re-attain cred-heavy money-spinner status with Sonic Nurse, but as the band put it on the incomparably brilliant ‘100%’, that’s got nothing to do with a good time.
In the manner of latter-day David Bowie, Sonic Nurse sees the band mine a particularly fecund store of material for musical inspiration – namely, their own back catalogue. And while that may sound like a seriously risky choice of creative method, when a group’s canon contains such 24-carat masterworks as Bad Moon Rising, Goo and Daydream Nation, I’m sure as hell going to forgive the odd moment of knowing self-reference.
The opening ‘Pattern Recognition’ (given the group’s inveterate devotion to Phillip K. Dick, I’d be none-too-surprised if that title constituted a doff of the cap to sci-fi author William Gibson), sees Kim reprise the acid-soaked, Manson-ite vixen persona of ‘Halloween’ to thrilling effect. ‘Unmade Bed’, one of the best tracks, is more closely related to recent albums such as Murray Street, A Thousand Leaves and even – God help us! – NYC Ghosts & Flowers; strands of gorgeous ambient guitar braided together to create a breathtakingly beautiful sonic vista.
Elsewhere, Kim does the riot grrrrl thang, a la ‘Kool Thing’, ‘Death Valley 69’ etc, on the wailing punk thrash ‘Kim Gordon And The Arthur Doyle Handcream’, Thurston takes the expressway direct to yr skull on ‘Stones’, and it’s a case of Glenn Branca for the memories on the no-wave indebted ‘I Love Golden Blue’.
In recent times, the post-rock brigade of Mogwai, Godspeed et al have taken Thurston and co’s nuclear power guitar assault in new and thrilling directions, but the fact remains that even after all these years, nobody does new-adventures in hi-fi quite like Messrs (and Mademoiselle) Gordon, Moore, Ranaldo, Shelley and O’Rourke.
As the party political spin machines never cease to remind us come election time, the Youth are our future.