Sonic Youth don’t reinvent the wheel, but impress nonetheless

Sonic Youth

ALBUM: “The Eternal”

LABEL: Matador Records

What can be said of Sonic Youth? The NYC art-rock heroes have been doing it — doing it well and, in the case of frontman Thurston Moore and bassist wife Kim Gordon , doing “it” — for nearly 30 years and remain as relevant as ever. With “The Eternal,” the band doesn’t reach a creative renaissance or recapture the lighting of “Daydream Nation .” No, with their latest, Sonic Youth continue to tread the enviable path they’ve been forging for three decades, albeit with more traditional rock.

If there’s a storyline behind “The Eternal,” it’s that it’s Sonic Youth’s first Twitter record. Scholars of rock ‘n’ roll and social networking, feast your eyes on that sentence. Yes, Sonic Youth, rock legends who are nearly all 50+, tweeted fans’ updates throughout the recording process of “The Eternal.” If a band with all the credibility in the world can use Twitter without shame, maybe there’s hope for the rest of us.

“The Eternal,” released on indie Matador Records (Sonic Youth’s first record this century not on major Geffen), starts with the group’s trademark fuzz-addled, innovatively tuned guitars chugging and rattling away on “Sacred Trickster.” Forty-five seconds in, Kim Gordon sensually belts with her impassioned, still youthful voice “I want you/to levitate me/ don’t you love me, yes?” and it’s clear that for a band comprised of parents, they’re not showing their age.

The relative brevity of the disc’s energetic opener paves the way for “Anti-orgasm,” a more classically constructed Sonic Youth song in its avant-garde nature. Still, through all the tempo shifts, vocal interplay between Gordon and Moore and even the song’s final three minutes of spacious experimentation, it feels like a pop song.

Moore takes the helm for the following three tracks — the poppy “Leaky Lifeboat (For Gregory Corso),” the drawn-out “Antenna” and the squealing guitar orgy of “What We Know.” But it’s the next track, “Calming the Snake,” which really solidifies Gordon as the star of “The Eternal.” If Moore’s voice has calmed over the years, and it has, Gordon’s wail is still as effective as ever. On “Calming the Snake” her vocal prowess proves a formidable fit with the violent guitar work of Moore and fellow guitarist Lee Renaldo. It’s almost as if the band’s energy is renewed with Gordon at the mic.

All in all, “The Eternal” will not be remembered as anything close to a landmark record by Sonic Youth historians. It’s a very solid album, wearing its hooks more proudly than previous efforts, but it gives most of it away for free, failing to challenge the listener. With that said, it’s tricky to gauge new work by groups with catalogues so rich and full. Had a troupe of youthful, 20-something Brooklyn hipsters penned an identical record, it’d be hailed as a masterwork. But no, this is Sonic Youth making yet another strong Sonic Youth record, and the world’s a better place for that.

4 of 5 stars