Sonic Nurse [LP] in Bloomington, MN

Picking up where
Murray Street
's languid
experimentalism
left off,
Sonic Youth
's somewhat awkwardly named
Sonic Nurse
shows that the band still sounds revitalized, and may have even tapped into a more fruitful creative streak than they did on their previous album. Anyone who has stuck with
this long knows more or less what to expect from them, but the group still has the potential to surprise; one of
's biggest surprises is the return of
Kim Gordon
. She had a relatively limited presence on
NYC Ghosts & Flowers
and
, but she's back in a big way on this album, contributing four tracks; not coincidentally,
Gordon
's songs are among the strongest on the album.
"Pattern Recognition"
gets
off to a strong start and ranks among her best
rock
songs, falling somewhere between
"Kool Thing"
"Bull in the Heather"
in its icy-hot appeal. Her quieter songs have just as much impact:
"Dude Ranch Nurse"
boasts an oddly timeless guitar lick and lyrics ("Let me ride you till you fall/Let's pretend that there's nothing at all") that blur the line between alluring and nihilistic.
"I Love You Golden Blue"
is another standout, a beautiful but bleak
ballad
with ghostly vocals that recall
Nico
at her most fragile. Of course, the rest of the band finds moments to shine:
Thurston Moore
's
"Dripping Dream"
begins as absurdist, angular
(although he still has the ability to make phrases like "We've been searching for the cream dream wax" sound like the coolest thing ever) and stretches out into a beautiful epic, with the interplay of feedback and guitar lines giving it a comet-tail majesty.
"Paper Cup Exit,"
the requisite
Lee Ranaldo
track, has a sharper-edged mix of
noise
and melody than most of
. Another of the album's surprises is how much of its inspiration seems to come from the band's late-'80s/early-'90s material. It's not just that the band slams
George W. Bush
on the mellow protest song
"Peace Attack,"
just as
Dirty
"Youth Against Fascism"
railed against the first
President Bush
, or that they peer into the void of
pop
culture on
"Kim Gordon and the Arthur Doyle Hand Cream"
as they did on
Goo
Karen Carpenter
tribute,
"Tunic."
On songs like
"New Hampshire"
-- which could pass for a lost track from
Daydream Nation
--
actually sound younger and more enthusiastic than they have in a few albums. All told, this album is probably the band's best balance of
melodies and
avant
-leaning structures since
Washing Machine
; even if it doesn't rank among their most ambitious work,
sounds like the kind of album
should be making at this point in their career. ~ Heather Phares