The Beat Surrender

Unbelievably Sonic Youth have been making our ears bleed for nearly thirty years now and in that time they’ve produced some of the most mind meltingly sonic trip- outs ever recorded. Anyone worth their experimental art rock distorto rock salt will cite the yoof as the masters of their craft. No one else comes close. Fact.

So after all this time is there still life in this most revered anti rock monster?...

...the answer is an emphatic yes!. ‘The Eternal’ is, i’m pleased to say, an exhilarating blast from start to finish. It’s another flamboyant cacophony of swirling fucked up guitars and disintegrating from the inside, space jams that only Sonic Youth could make real. Here’s me thinking that The Decemberists had already made the album of the year with ‘The Hazards Of Love’ ...well move over guys here comes Kim and the guys with a bullet to the head.

Now signed to Matador after many fruitful years with Geffen (on which they recorded their 1988 masterpiece: ‘Daydream Nation’) and with Jim O’Rourke replaced by pavement bassist Mark Ibold. The band remain as vital and coruscating as ever.

The album comes dressed in an extremely arresting abstract sleeve courtesy of the late John Fahey, as for the contents, well trying to describe Sonic Youth tunes is like trying to describe a Jackson Pollock painting to a blindman, no amount of flowery descriptive verbiage will suffice.. But I’ll try!…

The slower intricate dreamy vibe of recent albums has been replaced by an urgency and fresh optimism not heard since ‘Washing Machine’ and ‘Experimental Jet Set’ ...The tracks ‘What We Know’ and ‘Poison Arrow’ are skewed pop. ‘No Way’ and ‘Thunderclap for Bobby Pyn’ are typical Thurston, all bluster and stream of conscious lyrics with no shortage of stuttering monster riffs. Kim gets to do her dreamy vocal thang, especially on the sensual and delicious nine minute ‘Massage The History’, she also gets to rant and rave like a crazy New York bag lady on ‘Sacred Trickster’ and ‘Anti-Orgasm’.

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