RECORD REVIEW

Questions of power

Wow. I’m not sure if Sonic Youth’s latest is a love letter to NYC or hate mail, but it’s so good, I had to turn it off – listening to it in my car seemed disrespectful. The Youth has matured and evolved for almost 20 years, long enough to have an amazing degree of control, capable of displaying musical angst and experience in an ebb and flow from extreme to serene.

NYC Ghosts and Flowers is a sonic highway that occasionally turns you down a nostalgic track, with hints of Roxy Music, the Velvet Underground, the Doors and Captain Beefheart. But mostly I was reminded of Glen Branca’s first rock symphony: a continuous reverberation and investigation of the E chord made by multiple electric guitars. (SY’s guitarists, Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, performed with Branca in the early ’80s, and Sonic Youth’s debut EP was released on Branca’s label, Neutral Records, in 1983.)

After losing all of its equipment last year in Orange County, Sonic Youth appears to be experiencing a rebirth. More than ever, it’s reaching back to the unconventional, NYC performance-art aesthetic it grew out of, smoothly bridging the gap between pop structure and classical and experimental composition. The angry, mischievous noise-rockers have calmed down enough to take in a deep breath and take their time letting it out, exploring free-form electronic noise and guitar delicacy with repetitive melodic poetry interweaving throughout in a succession of haunting rock mantras.

"Gave you a flower, what was it anyway? Gave me the power, what was it anyway?"

Anita Schmaltz writes about music for Metro Times.