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Meh, to me its sonic youth losing what made them different from the other bands of their ilk, and that's actual song-craft. Sonic Youth put brilliant melodies and/or really hard, rocking riffs within a noisy and raw setting.
NYCG&F is, to me, a not-as-good shift to emphasis on the noisy side, which is great, but when they try to put it in song context as they do here, its just kind of annoying. Thurston's lame lyrics and annoying delivery don't help much... but the real thing with this album is that it sounds like you have a band that's neither here nor there, and isn't commited to what they usually do.
The same way Rather Ripped's shift towards the song and melody and dismissal of experimentation and noise was off-putting to some, the shift from experimental yet listenable song song structure to just experimental with song tacked on is off-putting to others.
I love it when Da Yoof get radical and make sheer noise and/or experiment/jam with different sounds and structures, but that just doesn't work too well when you try to put those elements into the setting of a bland rock song that just comes off as a pretentious mess.
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