Sonic Youth - Murray Street
(DGC)

While Murray Street, Sonic Youth's latest full-length album, has been called the second part of a musical trilogy dedicated to the atmosphere and history of the city of New York, it's also the third release in a different series, that of what I henceforth term "the new Sonic Youth sound." Though hinted at on 1995's Washing Machine, the new sound was fully realized first on 1998's A Thousand Leaves, and album that, despite its raw vibrancy, was widely panned for sounding rough and unfinished. With the help of Jim O'Rourke, Sonic Youth managed to solve the problem of sounding "unfinished" on 2000's New York City Ghosts and Flowers, only to produce an album full of awkward song structures, forced-sounding deliveries, and a feeling that what quality music was implicit in the songwriting of the album had been left overburdened and overworked. Aside from a few choice tracks, the album left me fearing the worst (see the beginning of the review) of a band who, and I can say this without hyperbole, because it's simply a fact at this point, had played a major role in the development of my consciousness as a music fan.

Luckily, on Murray Street, Sonic Youth, now with O'Rourke as a full-fledged member, have created an album that sounds wholly comfortable with being complacent and contains some of the most lush music of their career. The jerky rhythms and uneasiness that marked some of the most unfulfilling moments on the last album have been jettisoned, and Sonic Youth have emerged sounding more confident and in control. Murray Street is Sonic Youth in their natural setting, and though there's no new ground broken on the album that Sonic Youth hasn't tread upon before, the album is also far from begin a rehash of past work. The sparse, simple guitar riffs that have been the group's main fare these past few years serve as the backbones of the songs, with the other guitars swirling and chiming behind. Thurston Moore gets the majority of the vocal duties; the relaxed "The Empty Page" and more raucous "Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style" are his highlights. As usual, Lee Ranaldo's offering, "Karen Revisited," is the album's most well-rounded gem. A dreamy, floating song reminiscent of Ranaldo's contributions on Washing Machine, at the 3:30 mark, it dissolves into a squealing whine, and, over the course of the next seven minutes, serves as a fairly representative survey of the different directions that Sonic Youth noise-jams have taken in recent years, ending with quiet applause. Kim Gordon's two selections are sandwiched at the end of the album, the jumpy "Plastic Sun," which revisits the songwriting of NYC Ghosts and Flowers with much more success, and the sprawling, languid "Sympathy for the Strawberry," which starts with a four-minute instrumental section oddly reminiscent of Dirty before Kim's vocals waft in and drift towards the drones that end the album.

Perhaps Sonic Youth can be faulted for the conservative feel of Murray Street; it doesn't quite reach the almost ecstatic feel of some of A Thousand Leaves' more far-reaching jams. New York City Ghosts and Flowers was surely more ambitious, if not as well executed, and there's obviously nothing here that screams with the sheer dissonance of Confusion is Sex. And even if none of the songs on Murray Street are spectacular, it's hard to choose even one track that stands out as the worst. It's a smooth ride, even when things get noisy and the saxophones of Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich of Borbetomagus make their blustery appearance, and that suits Sonic Youth just fine. Hey, as people get older they've got to mellow out, right? Lucky for us, the mellow is relative, and Sonic Youth still have some feedback left in those amps.

adam strohm 2002 jul 12