Sonic Youth
Rather Ripped

THE REVIEW

Some might say, dismissively, that Sonic Youth have become "Pop". And since Pop is often synonymous with bland, tasteless, even commercial, well, one easily concludes that Sonic Youth have become a band better suited for partying: dinosaurs, obsolete, old, stale. And when has Rock ever been for the old? Beware, beware of appearances.

What Sonic Youth have embarked on, alongside the outcome of their recent albums, both the soft atmospheres of "Murray Street" and the compressed career compendium of "Sonic Nurse", is also one of the possible logical evolutions of their career: if they were born with the intention of denying (and then rebuilding) the canons of Rock, perfectly capturing their time of denying every Certainty as such, it was certainly reasonable to expect their path would lead to the negation of negation, that is, of themselves: and so here we are, 20 years later, Sonic Youth embrace the song form; not that they ever abandoned the concept of THEME, always pivotal (since it's pivotal first of all for human perception of music), but the theme was always churned up, annihilated, indeed denied, while getting lost in illicit sounds, rhythms, and times became legitimate. This is not present anymore, that's why they have returned to the song form: the theme is not denied, but rather developed, changes, mutates, but the necessity of its existence is admitted. Perhaps an admission of their own limits, perhaps simply humility. But if it were the former, it would likely have been a murky and dark album, probably ugly or perhaps intriguing in its rabid admission of uselessness.
Instead, Sonic Youth do not lose themselves, they do deny themselves, yes, but as they've always done, they manage to rebuild themselves: for this reason, there is no shadow of banality, for this reason, besides an artistic journey that reaffirms its vitality for the artist, and thus always finds meaning in the significant, Sonic Youth also manage to still give SENSE to their significant: never more effectively than now, Sonic Youth describe and build a world that is chaos, precisely because every song, as such, is now chaos in itself. And anyway, what's more difficult? Destroying the very form of Rock to admit that no possible form exists (except chaos), or remaining tied to this same form and managing instead, for good reason, to construct chaos? Therefore, the only true shadow of routine that emerges is that hint in the stunning "Tourquoise Boy" of sonic diversion. The only real hint of Sonic Youth that they were as a stylistic device, not as an expression. But with rare intelligence, that hint remains a hint. No prolonged times, no reverberated and tribality-tinged noise, no Dionysian yet industrial euphoria.

Sonic Youth at their abstraction, perhaps more bleakly existential than before, but paradoxically at the same time more incisive than ever in their metaphysical intent. Change, after all, is a necessity. And that's what matters.