Innovation and striving for new sonic territory are usually important factors for bands that have been around for over 25 years. But sometimes it’s as important to fall back on your strengths as illustrated on Sonic Youth’s new album The Eternal. The album doesn’t drastically stray from their melodic and accessible 2006 effort Rather Ripped, but instead Sonic Youth rev-up the distortion and intensity for one of 2009’s best rock releases yet.

The Eternal recalls Sonic Youth’s mid-nineties albums such as Dirty and Washing Machine except the grating noise factor is subdued to instead focus on crafting epic climaxes and eerie soundscapes. The album contains a certain maturity in its songwriting as the tracks rock with the best of the band’s older material but doesn’t come off as forced and dated.

For The Eternal, the band tweaked their line-up by adding former Pavement bassist Mark Ibold. The addition not only establishes a more prominent low-end but frees up Kim Gordon for guitar duty. The three-guitar attack works best when setting the mood or tone of a song such as on “Antenna,” where Gordon’s subtle ascending-descending picking guitar line works as an effective contrast to Lee Ronaldo’s delay-pedal swells and Thurston Moore’s chord strums.

Album opener and first single “Sacred Trickster” begins with dissonant guitar strikes before drummer Steve Shelley kicks the song into high gear with a driving beat that leads to a fuzzy guitar drenched chorus. The drum-and-bass intro for the groover “What We Know” acts as a foundation for the song’s evolution into classic Sonic Youth discordant guitar interplay. “No Way,” one of The Eternal’s best takes, opens with Moore’s angsty distortion-fueled grunge riff until a galloping-beat bridge shifts into a scatterbrain guitar-lick freak out.

It’s not just the music that has matured, but the lyrics are also timely. Gordon appears to take a shot at California divas such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan on the track “Malibu Gas Station” as she sings, “I can’t move faster/ my face is plaster/ the breasts are bangin’/ abdominal master.” The sludgy “Anti-Orgasm” deals pertinent issues of war, government, and god with an ironic lyrical interchange between Moore and Gordon during the chorus, “Penetration/ destroys the party/ violation/ of the cosmic body/ do you under/ stand the problem/ anti-war/ is anti-orgasm.”

When Sonic Youth released their classic album Daydream Nation in 1988, they were hailed as one of the most important acts of the alternative rock forefront. While The Eternal won’t qualify as alternative music in 2009, it’s a statement record from a band that never wavered in creating smart, fearless, and poignant rock music.

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Catch Sonic Youth Saturday June 27 and Sunday June 28 at The Vic Theatre! Click here to buy Saturday tickets or here for Sunday tickets.
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