NME Reviews

Sonic Youth : Bristol Academy

...ferociously cool...

Back with their 16th album, ‘Murray Street’, Sonic Youth have dragged themselves from the abyss of avant garde obscurity to make a record as relevant to today as ‘Daydream Nation’ was back in 1988. New songs ‘The Empty Page’ and ‘Disconnection Notice’ jangle with sunkissed melody surely indebted to the songwriting input of latest recruit, Jim O’Rourke. The ninety-minute art-jams are banished, replaced instead with mature, controlled guitar blazes against which Gordon’s distressed vocals sound more ferociously cool than ever.

But it is the willingness to experiment, make mistakes and be silently accountable for almost every rock movement happening right now that make Sonic Youth so vital. Your parents may have woken up to the Velvet Underground 15 years too late but you don’t have to do the same.

Krissi Murison

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