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It's 110% Sonic Youth. It's just old, "mature" Sonic Youth, with some flirtation with their youthful ways. Sonic Geezers. But I mean that lovingly -- that "mature" songwriting sounds like a stepback when looking at such masterworks as "A Thousand Leaves" and half of "Washing Machine", sure; hell, it's hard to believe sometimes that this is the same band who made "Daydream Nation" years ago. The thing is, though, while everyone is pining for them to write another "Cross the Breeze" or "Diamond Sea", they already made those songs. In fact, it seems like instead of looking back, they're constantly pushing to "refine" their sound with every album, which is extremely interesting and pleasing to my ears... maybe too pleasing, in general, as it's surely going to frustrate some fans. Sonic Youth is removing the "edges" from their music, for the most part, and those edges are what attract most people, afterall.
...There's still plenty of old-SY on this record: Thurston singing the exact same notes he's playing, noise breakdowns, sassy Thurston vocals, etc. Admittingly, these are the worst and most forced-sounding parts of the album. I think, however, instead of focusing on that, let's look at how flawlessly the songs flow. For a band with wild tunings and sometimes-bizarre song structures, it's a wonder that they make these songs work so well. They flow organically; most parts don't sound out of place (except for some aforementioned noise parts that don't fit, a shocking SY first! Listen to "Antennae" for one such example). SY makes this stuff look easy, because they basically invented this sound.
And, yes indeed, they're maturing it; the background vocals, Kim's best singing in years, some wonderful acoustic guitar! Again, they're "softening" their sound to some, but to me they're simply pushing to write more "mature" material, and I don't mind the change as long as the songs are still good. It seems like that's something they've been trying to do for years, and I think it's taken awhile to get to this point. This album is way better than Rather Ripped, to me. It's got some great songs, some throwaways of course but eh. It's actually pretty damn consistent.
...Sonic Youth constantly reveals a fascinated and fascinating tension -- an oscillation -- between attraction to the feminine version of "notre musique"… and a corresponding need to erect, sometimes brutally, a barrier to the femininity which is perceived as all-absorbing. Educate, inform, and entertain -- pop goes the easel.
It's not the be-all, end-all album people were expecting, but it's 10x better than Nurse and 100x better than Rather Ripped. Also, Fahey did the cover art (posthumously, of course). That alone raises it a few notches in my book.
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