Thurston Moore grabbed the mic stand and held it high as he yelled, “We’re Queer, We’re Here, Get Used to It” before offering a completely raucous version of new album track “No Way.” The scene couldn’t have been more perfect. Chicago’s Pride Festival was blocks away from Lakeview’s Vic Theatre, where inside Sonic Youth, a band that dared to similarly go against the grain by creating pop songs with musical afterthoughts like dissonance, static, and alternate tunings, was electrifying a sold out crowd.

Sonic Youth visited The Vic Theatre on Sunday, June 28 as the first stop on their current United States tour in support of their new Matador release The Eternal. Sunday was the second of two Vic shows. Saturday’s set featured the majority of the new album and few older tracks in between. While Sunday’s show featured more of the same, the band’s energy and power took command of the audience for the entire hour and a half.

Minor but important issues were corrected between Saturday and Sunday’s shows. The sound was immaculate as opposed to Saturday’s show, which occasionally had level problems. The band seemed more at ease and utilized a better command of their instruments. Even at 50 years-old Moore still hid his eyes behind long wavy brown hair and donned jeans and sneakers as he leapt around the stage with the passion of a teenager.

Sunday’s set offered all of The Eternal save for one track. The faster tunes like “Calming The Snake” and the Lee Ranaldo-sung groover “What We Know” faired better than the mellow-er jams such as “Massage The History.” While it was interesting to see Moore dawn an acoustic guitar on “Massage…,” Kim Gordon’s voice couldn’t handle the falsetto parts, which sound better on the record. But who’s to blame her? She sang her heart out all night, especially on the jungle bass-heavy rarity “Making the Nature Scene” and Daydream Nation classic “The Sprawl.”

The set was fast, furious and, at times, mesmerizing when erratic white noise would give way to sleek-yet-disordered guitar lines. However, after being around for 25-plus years and 16 albums worth of material, you’d think playing for more than an hour and forty-five minutes would be a priority. Also, while it’s excellent they are playing multiple tracks from their landmark album Daydream Nation, great tunes from Goo and the severely underrated Dirty go unnoticed.

If Sonic Youth proved one thing Sunday at the Vic, it’s that they can still rock with the best of them and showed no signs of slowing down. But more importantly, they have shown that their song writing ability is incomparable as they are able to capture the same spirit and energy in a song written in 2009 as a song written in 1987.

Complete Setlist from Eyegunk.wordpress.com:

Sonic Youth @ The Vic – Sun. June 28th 2009

Encore 2
The Sprawl
‘Cross The Breeze