In Stores Now: The Eternal by Sonic Youth

Detail of a cover illustration from Home & Garden by Erik Nitsche, June 1939

I like Sonic Youth, but I stopped buying new Sonic Youth albums a while ago. It started to seem like each one that came out was "another Sonic Youth record" - nothing special. When they released Rather Ripped in 2006, I heard that it was a turn toward a more straightforward "pop" sound, using their signature guitar sounds in more conventional structures for a more accessible sound. This was probably not good news to a lot of Sonic Youth fans, but it was just what I was hoping for. For some reason, though, I never got around to buying Rather Ripped - something about that terrible Rancid-looking album cover, probably. So, when I heard earlier this year that their first album for Matador Records, The Eternal, was going to be an extension of this trend (with a better album cover), I thought I'd give it a chance.

And I'm enjoying it a lot. Starting the album with two Kim Gordon songs is a gutsy move, and not really a smart one - she's the least accessible songwriter in the band, and her vocals and lyrics grate on a lot of people. Me included. But, luckily, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo both come through on their songs. "Leaky Lifeboat (for Gregory Corso)" and "Thunderclap for Bobby Pyn" are demonstrations of pop concision by Moore that I never knew he had in him. His dreamy,droning lullaby "Antenna" is also a winner. Gordon's best song on the record is "Calming the Snake", which has an appropriately serpentine bass riff, but her "Malibu Gas Station" is the album's weakest track, running out of gas (ha!) halfway through its six minutes of churning riffage.

Ranaldo has always been my favorite songwriter and vocalist in Sonic Youth, and I've come to terms with the fact that he only gets a couple tracks per album (at best). On The Eternal, his songs are well-placed highlights - the penultimate "Walkin Blue" is a very melodic pop song with his catchiest melody since the Dirty b-side "Genetic". Earlier in the album, "What We Know" provides a dark counterpoint to Moore and Gordon's poppier numbers, but it's catchy in its own way. Starting with a bass riff that doesn't sound very Sonic Youth to me (new bassist and former Pavement dude Mark Ibold's influence?), it delivers a catchy melody hook and nice guitar freak-out before doubling back nicely to the initial bass line. I think I need to go find used copies of the last three Sonic Youth records and do some catching up.

"What We Know" by Sonic Youth