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AFTER several years with producer-guitarist Jim O'Rourke as a fifth member, Sonic Youth has scaled back to its original lean four-piece — fittingly, as this is the band at its most intimate. The SY love album? Well, yes, starting off with Kim Gordon breathily cooing, "You keep me coming home again," in the opening song, "Reena," perhaps the bubbliest (and non-ironically so) pop song of the band's 25-year career as an alternative pace setter.
Of course, this is love and pop through SY's revealing lens. The former is anything but straightforward, with Gordon and fellow singers-writers Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo exploring various, often contradictory, constituents and corollaries — security, dependence, lust, affection, friendship, obsession, infidelity, paranoia. There's even faith in "Do You Believe in Rapture?" where the end times may or may not be a metaphor for earthly love.
And there are still plenty of the band's familiar musical leaps into the void with free-floating instrumental diversions and digressions. But most striking is the abundance of catchy melodies, smartly and effectively handled — not by the limited (if expressive) singers, but by the guitars, with many songs marked by simple yet hummable leads. It almost makes you wonder what would have happened if Television and Peter Frampton had worked together. That's a compliment.
By the final song, "Or," a somber sketch of a fan or friend, the band seems drained and exhilarated. Sounds like love.
Steve Hochman