[Moshe]

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New CD reviews


Jan. 14, 2007 12:00 AM
'The Destroyed Room'

****

Sonic Youth

(Geffen)

Sonic Youth may not be the best band to emerge from the college-rock airwaves of the '80s, but the experimental New York four-piece is certainly the most interesting, as The Destroyed Room proves. An 11-track trawl through the band's B-sides and unreleased jams from the past 13 years, the disc beautifully captures the droning dissonance of the no-wave pioneers. The Destroyed Room is dominated by long instrumental jams, from the 10-minute opening Fire Engine Dream through The Diamond Sea, a 25-minute epic dating from 1995. It includes several shorter tracks, like the 1994 B-side Razor Blade, the jittery Campfire and the moody, intense Beautiful Plateau, a lovely track featuring singer and bassist Kim Gordon. Outtakes and rarities collections are a hit-or-miss proposition. Often they show why the band didn't bother to release the songs. But like Tom Waits' Orphans, another amazing rarities collection that hit stores in '06, The Destroyed Room shows the fount of creativity that fuels Sonic Youth's "regular" releases.

- Michael Senft