If anyone thought Sonic Youth were getting a little too comfortable, The Eternal proved they weren't afraid of change, even as they closed in on 30 years of making music together. The Eternal is Sonic Youth's first album for legendary indie label Matador Records after a nearly 20-year stint with Geffen Records, which dovetails nicely with the fact that this is also the band's first album with former Pavement bassist (and Matador alum) Mark Ibold. Sonic Youth even changed their usual songwriting approach, writing and recording tracks in quick batches instead of planning an entire song cycle at once. Dust wasn't allowed to settle on these songs, nor could it -- the most striking thing about The Eternal is how hard it rocks. The contemplative haze that drifted over Murray Street, Sonic Nurse, and to a lesser extent Rather Ripped is blasted away by opening track "Sacred Trickster"'s lunging, massive guitars and Kim Gordon's demand to be pressed up against an amp. The rest of the band sounds revitalized, too: Lee Ranaldo's excellent "What We Know" is a furious yet complex rocker, and Thurston Moore sounds like the leader of the gang on "Thunderclap for Bobby Pyn," which name-drops the Heaven's Gate cult and the alias of Germs singer Darby Crash between its "whoa-oh" and "yeah yeah"-fueled choruses. This is the heaviest Sonic Youth have been since Sister, and it's fitting that their return to the indie world touches on their SST days. That's not the only era they revisit, however. "Poison Arrow"'s skronky grind evokes Dirty's sexier moments; "Antenna"'s radio love turns Murray Street's sun-streaked drones into epic pop; and "Calming the Snake"'s tumbling, atonal riffing suggests summery menace as much as it does Sonic Youth's no wave roots.
While there's a little bit of almost everything that has made Sonic Youth great over the years, the band hasn't put these elements together in precisely this way before. Considering how expansive their last few albums for Geffen were, The Eternal's relatively concise songs also set it apart, but when Sonic Youth do stretch out, it's with purpose. "Anti-Orgasm" begins as a duet/duel between Gordon and Moore, who trade challenges and come-ons over free-falling guitars that become a rolling, slow-motion excursion; the track's instrumental interplay is more violent, and more sensual, than its words. "Massage the History" is even more vast, encompassing fragile acoustic strumming, distortion storms, and dead calm over its nearly ten-minute expanse. While The Eternal doesn't flow quite as effortlessly as some Sonic Youth albums, it's perfectly balanced, its raw moments tempered by the subtle "Walkin Blue" and "Malibu Gas Station," which creeps so imperceptibly toward its raging guitars that they're almost unnoticed until you're caught in their undercurrent. Sonic Youth's freedom to follow their bliss is what holds The Eternal together; just as paradoxically, the changes they make on this album not only bring excitement to their music, they reaffirm just how consistently good the band has been -- and continues to be -- over the years.
Despite Sonic Youths’ endless critical plaudits over the years and their emergence at the time when I began developing a real taste in the alternative, I never gravitated to their music. Let’s be honest. Sonic Youth is an acquired taste and their music, at its most experimental, is difficult to absorb with hooks that take [...]
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Much like the film A Clockwork Orange, the book Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas and British televisions’ very own Jeremy Kyle, Sonic Youth constantly seem to be one of those bands who are only ever regarded as having a ‘cult following’. Not quite mainstream enough, despite their plethora of albums and much revered status [...]
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Sonic Youth is back with their best work since Washing Machine.
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Sonic Youth is one of the bands that I never want to change. Please don’t dabble with techno beats. No acoustic albums please. Just keep pumping out your unique brand of experimental noise rock that I’ve held so dear for as long as I can remember.And they do keep it pumping on The Eternal – [...]
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Sonic Youth's latest album The Eternal is a great slice of vintage Sonic Youth, through all the noise there is structure and a great sense of purpose. "Sacred Trickster" has been getting all the play, but Sonic Youth switched it up last night on Jimmy Fallon and played "No Way". Video below. YouTube Direktvideo link [Embedded Video]
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Sonic Youthby Howard Wyman • June 12, 2009 Sonic YouthThe Eternal(Matador, 2009)To the extent that any band can, Sonic Youth has earned a sort of carte blanche through their phenomenal longevity, their legacy of innovation, and undeniable career-spanning quality (in relative terms, that is, and only among fans of this genre, which the band themselves basically defined in the '80s and '90s; the.
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Long time indie rock mainstays made me eat crow last week as I gave a listened to Sonic Youth's latest release with The Eternal.If The Eternal is in reference to their long standing career, then I feel the nose is hit square on the head here. I have long since felt a band loses relevance and edge over time as the decades pile on, and have been a staunch supporter of the "Live fast, die young, a...
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So, mind my horrible title but I didn't want to just put Sonic Youth. Well to the meat of this post my thoughts on their new album "The Eternal". At first I came into this album almost ready to hate it and push it off as just another album from a band that isn't that out there right now. And for some time this appeared to be true but than the true power of Sonic Youth became aware to me. The st...
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Sonic Youthby Howard Wyman • June 12, 2009 Sonic YouthThe Eternal(Matador, 2009)To the extent that any band can, Sonic Youth has earned a sort of carte blanche through their phenomenal longevity, their legacy of innovation, and undeniable career-spanning quality (in relative terms, that is, and only among fans of this genre, which the band themselves basically defined in the '80s and '90s; the.
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Sonic Youth - The EternalWe should forgive bands at this stage of their career for being remiss when it comes to the process of evolution. Sonically, The Eternal has a lot in common with its predecessor, Rather Ripped: a lush, somewhat more reserved sound, but one that still bears all the fuzzy, harmonic hallmarks of a SY recording.I wanted to be shocked by some kind of great revolutionary stat...
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It's official: Sonic Youth’s Geffen days are behind them. So, too, it seems, are the pop flirtations that developed with them.
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Today, the stream of Sonic Youth's The Eternal went live for those participating in Buy Early Get Now, with the actual physical release date set for June 9th. Bearing in mind that I'm one of those odd sorts that favors Bad Moon Rising and EVOL over Daydream Nation and what came after, these are my impressions on the new album:"Sacred Trickster", the album's single, is a standard-fare Sonic Yout...
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MP3: Sonic Youth - "Sacred Trickster" from The Eternal, out June 9 on Matador. Pre-order now and you get a bunch of extra booty. "I want you to levitate me / Don't you love me yet? / Press up against...
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Sonic Youth have unveiled the video for "Sacred Trickster," the opening track off their 16th album and latest masterpiece The Eternal. With only two minutes of Kim Gordon angst to work with, director Tom Surgal quickly tells the story of three lady anarchists who pack paint bombs in their pocketbooks and detonate them at some party where mimes serve as cocktail waiters. groovy
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When Sonic Youth's new label Matador Records invited journalists to hear a preview of their upcoming album, The Eternal back in February, most of them liked it so much they were disappointed to learn it wouldn't be released for another four months. A writer from Newsweek, of all places, convinced them to issue a preview montage."The Youth are all cool and avant-garde, right? They dig William Bu...
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Shot from somebody's iPhone in Luxembourg, and I am guessing dubbed over with the song.How old is Kim Gordon? She rocks.The official video:The Youth are coming to Philly July 2 at the Electric Factory,,,,,, time to find a babysitter!
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Just loving this song, this album this summer.This is one of the more accessible SY tracks. Even local 'adult alternative aging hippy' radio XPN is playing it.This is from a live performance done by an audience member in Toronto, playing Anti-Orgasm, and Thunderclap for Bobby Pyn (which is also fantastic).NME reports the Youth will perform on Gossip Girl. Never saw that show, maybe I need to ...
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While Conan was interviewing Dane "Lame" Cook, I was watching this:the new album The Eternal came out this past Tuesday on Matador Records. get it now Technorati Us
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These artists are thoughtful enough to release an album today. What a wonderful birthday gift for me!A CampAeroplane Pageant- MP3Anti-Flag- ReviewThe Dead WeatherDirty Projectors- ReviewKasabian- ReviewThe Low Anthem- ReviewRhett Miller- ReviewPlacebo- ReviewKathryn Williams & Neill MacColl- ReviewSo Many DynamosSonic Youth- Review
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Sonic Youthby Howard Wyman • June 12, 2009 Sonic YouthThe Eternal(Matador, 2009)To the extent that any band can, Sonic Youth has earned a sort of carte blanche through their phenomenal longevity, their legacy of innovation, and undeniable career-spanning quality (in relative terms, that is, and only among fans of this genre, which the band themselves basically defined in the '80s and '90s; the.
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Sonic Youthby Howard Wyman • June 12, 2009 Sonic YouthThe Eternal(Matador, 2009)To the extent that any band can, Sonic Youth has earned a sort of carte blanche through their phenomenal longevity, their legacy of innovation, and undeniable career-spanning quality (in relative terms, that is, and only among fans of this genre, which the band themselves basically defined in the '80s and '90s; the.
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Sonic Youth has made the first track from their new album, The Eternal (out Jun 9), available for free download.Get your MP3 here: Snob's Music
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We were told the new Sonic Youth album, their 16th, was going to include black metal-inspired lyrics and "heavy ass weirdo hooks" but nobody let us know about the John Fahey album art: The brilliant finger-picking guitarist and writer's (check out How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life ) red, white, and black pigments adorn The Eternal 's front cover. (Sorta black metal, at least in color schem...
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Kim, Thurston, Steve and Lee have decided to give me a big birthday present. That's right, the new Sonic Youth album, The Eternal, will be released on my birthday, June 9th. The Eternal will be released on Matador, and is the iconic band's first album since leaving major label Geffen. Ex-Pavement member Mark Ibold also joins the SY crew for this one. We already have the artwork (above) and track
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Sonic Youth's sixteenth album The Eternal is due for release on June 9th via Matador . Here are all the details. Steve Shelley, Lee Ranaldo, Mark Ibold, Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore have emerged from Echo Canyon West studio in Hoboken, New Jersey (where they have been trickling out details via their Twitter ) where they've been working with John Agnello, on their 16th album.It's called The E...
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Sonic Youth has made the first song from their forthcoming album, The Eternal (out June 9th), available for free download. The track is one of their harder ones, with Kim Gordon taking the lead vocals.You can get it here:"Sacred Trickster"- MP3Sonic Youth's websiteSonic Youth's Myspace
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The latest SY album is pretty awesome methinks. Out jun 9. but you can listen to the album as a 128kbs stream if you pre-order (only 12$ at the matador store). They're been around for ever (as the clip above shows), but they are still the coolest band on Earth.
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Sonic Youth is one of the bands that I never want to change. Please don’t dabble with techno beats. No acoustic albums please. Just keep pumping out your unique brand of experimental noise rock that I’ve held so dear for as long as I can remember.And they do keep it pumping on The Eternal – [...]
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| Title | Lyrics | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Sacred Trickster |
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| 2 Anti-Orgasm |
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| 3 Leaky Lifeboat [For Gregory Corso] |
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| 4 Antenna |
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| 5 What We Know |
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| 6 Calming the Snake |
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| 7 Poison Arrow |
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| 8 Malibu Gas Station |
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| 9 Thunderclap for Bobby Pyn |
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| 10 No Way |
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| 11 Walkin Blue |
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| 12 Massage the History |
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 "The Eternal")
