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Sonic Youth
Post-Punk/Experimental/Rock
New York, NY USA

For Fans Of: The Velvet Underground, Dinosaur Jr., Pavement

Whenever a new Sonic Youth album is released many who are familiar with their work hover more or less around a single thought. Will this be a solid accessible album that we can rock to or will it be a cryptic avant-garde set piece that pushes the boundaries of the medium? The Eternal is a release that is firmly in the former category.

That is not to say that Sonic Youth have gone easy on us in any way. Just because this is not a fifty minute guitar reverb track doesn’t mean that this album is lacking in any way. This is merely the band doing what they do best and it comes across very fluidly. It seems as if they have come to the point of perfecting their style and content to where it seems almost effortless. Listening to this record makes it seem hard to believe that there was never a way to take lessons in guitar feedback and unorthodox tuning.

Sonic Youth has never been a band to pander to their audience and give us what we expect from them. They have given us as albums that seem almost impossible to decipher or understand as ones that seem so punk rock it makes thinking too hard almost impossible. Many times they have taken us to points where, especially to the outsider, we wonder whether what we are listening to can even be classified as music at all. Then they reel us back in with our newly remodeled sense of what is possible with sound.

In this album we are being reeled back just enough to be comfortable. However, it would be hard to consider this album as a mainstream effort or something that resembles Sonic Youth moving into pop. It is hard to even decide if this album has a clear single or not. Whatever the case Sonic Youth has proven once again that they are still very much here to do what they do best and remain leaders in the underground.

(Review written by Chad Ohnstad)

Sonic Youth
Song: What We Know
Album: The Eternal (2009)

Sonic Youth
Song: No Way
Album: The Eternal (2009)

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