Critics' Choice
New CD's
By BEN RATLIFF
Published: June 12, 2006
Sonic Youth
Readers’ Opinions
Forum: Popular Music
"Rather Ripped" (Geffen)
Sonic Youth is 25, and its 20th album appears tomorrow. You may forget that math, or you may fixate on it. What was Sonic Youth's past, in larger terms, anyway? What did the band stand for, except unorthodox guitar tunings, overtones, conceptual art, popular culture (inasmuch as it could be related to conceptual art), inside jokes, fanzines and — somewhat skeptically — rock 'n' roll?
Perhaps not having the burden of a cause made it easier for Sonic Youth to persist. Certainly it is the rare example of a hard-touring group that often appeared to be having fun: throwing its weight behind new bands with no commercial future (as well as one that did: Nirvana), singing lyrics that have occasionally been pretentious or silly, playing long jams with dissonant gobs of noise, playing new-wavey eighth-note riffs.
Everyone has a different idea of what Sonic Youth's best record is because none are in any way perfect; they all contain various failures. But "Rather Ripped" has a different level of authoritative power. It is a fully legitimate, clear and strong rock 'n' roll record in the band's own style. And it may really be the best one, though one fears that saying it out loud means the band's work is done.
Sonic Youth had its own cloistered sound, defined by its tunings, in the beginning. I remember being fully spooked by all that indirect, ugly-beautiful tonality as a teenager, seeing the band at CBGB in 1983. (The band returns there to play a sold-out show tomorrow night before starting its summer tour.) But Sonic Youth is still here because its four members said yes to so many things: no music within their reach was too goofy or too refined.
As squalid as it liked to sound, overturning standard uses for amplifiers and effects boxes — and with an interest in Cage, Reich, Wolff, Cardew and post-classical music — there was always a classic-rock band inside Sonic Youth, ever since it first got a taste of writing a strong melody. (Those melodies appeared on "Evol," in 1986.)
That classic-rock band is what you hear in a lot of "Rather Ripped," still combining its billowing and liquefying guitar sounds, but condensing and concentrating them.
Here's how it works. On "Jams Run Free," Kim Gordon finishes her psychosexual, color-field lyrics 2 minutes 10 seconds into the song. ("I love the way you move/I hope it's not too late for me/It's too good on this sea/Where the light is green.") Immediately a rhythm-section vamp locks in, and the two guitars go at each other, one playing plinky harmonic tones and one discharging broad vales of fuzz. Thirty seconds later the guitars come together to play five notes in unison and two in harmony; then they pull apart as the drums gallop toward a blastoff, which happens at 3:20, opening into another riff, in a new, hazy, beautiful territory of sound. It's over at 3:50, and wow, it is satisfying.
Ms. Gordon is the glory of this record. For so long she has made her voice breathy and plain, at the edge of losing control, like a possessed Nico. Still, she has been only half there. Over the last 10 years she has become more central — playing more guitar, too, rather than bass — and on "Rather Ripped" she does something unusual: she sings forthrightly and in tune, making "Reena," "Turquoise Boy" and "Jams Run Free" the record's best tracks.
All Sonic Youth albums end with a question mark; this one literally does. Its last track, "Or," rumbles along quietly with an acoustic guitar and no climax. It has the purposeless atmosphere of a song that could drag on for 20 minutes, but it is brought home in 3½, ending with Thurston Moore's recitation of the kind of questions he probably hears a lot: "How long is the tour?/What time you guys playing?/Where you going next?/What comes first? The music? Or the words?" BEN RATLIFF