Rather Ripped reviews
 

Lets post them in one thread:

http://www.musicomh.com/albums5/sonic-youth-2_0606.htm

Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped (Geffen) UK release date: 5 June 2006
For 25 years Sonic Youth have been ably treading the line between pop and experimentalism and just occasionally they manage to achieve something that changes the face of music as we know it. 1988 saw the release of their landmark album Daydream Nation, and it has attained such a legendary and revered status that it seems Sonic Youth may never scale such groundbreaking heights again. It's not that they've been struggling to create great music for the last 18 years though. From their major label debut Goo to the bewildering experimentalism of Goodbye Twentieth Century, Sonic Youth have always produced some challenging and exciting music. It's just that many of their recent albums have been patchy, with only occasional glimmers of genius.
Rather Ripped sees the band heading into far more commercial territory than usual. If Murray Street took on the prog rock of the '70s, then this is SY pillaging the '60s for the greatest pop sound and making it their own. It reeks of sunshine and festivals, it's a sprightly breeze of a record.
Opener Reena sees Kim Gordon singing, rather than the bellowing of lines that we've come to expect from her over the years. It's like listening to Nico on a bright Sunday morning.
Gordon's voice is not the only step away from dissonance in evidence here. Jams Run Free features arpeggiated guitar lines that weave in and out of each other, ringing like wind chimes caught by a freak gust of wind on a baking hot day. There's not a hint of crashing waves of a guitar tsunami on the horizon at all.
Turqoise Boy is beautifully understated, with a husky vocal from Gordon and delicate guitars from Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo that eventually work themselves into some wonderfully hectic noise midway through the track. There are also guitar solos that actually sound like guitar solos: as in the rock band, widdly widdly twin guitar break kind of solos. Not the kind of thing you'd usually find on a SY record. There's even something approaching sincere lyricism in the godly Do You Believe in Rapture? - Thurston Moore seems to be constantly on the brink of an epiphany throughout the track.
This is not to say that the usual elements aren't present of course. There are walls of discordant guitars, there's the familiar rumble of Steve Shelley's drums driving the chaos to its logical conclusion, it's all here. It's just that on Rather Ripped, these elements are way back in the mix, they are used sparingly to add tone to the songs. If Daydream Nation was a record that focused the attention on guitar experimentalism, then Rather Ripped is SY's homage to the pop song. It's the best thing they've done in some time.
- Sam Shepherd

http://www.smh.com.au/news/cd-review...359646581.html

When the mood takes them, Sonic Youth can make complex, challenging art-rock albums drawing on their avant-garde roots.
They can also make the kind of art-pop album - tunes alongside hints of dissonance; hooks sitting with low-level throbbing; emotions paired with a cool distancing - that only Wilco can consistently pull off. This is one of those Sonic Youth albums, possibly their most accessible album since Goo and Dirty, more than a decade ago.
There is little cluttering the delivery of songs such as Do You Believe in Rapture?, where even though some ragged feedback can be heard in the background, Thurston Moore's voice is front and centre and almost soothing. And What a Waste has Kim Gordon nonchalantly riding a guitar riff that would not be out of place on a (part prog, part psychedelic) Blue Oyster Cult album in the early '70s.
It may be art but it's also a straightforward album: smart, but easy to enjoy.

Thanks to Bobbyjames23

http://www.comfortcomes.com/?page=reviews&id=1003

The long awaited new album from the masters of underground rock is here. Everything you might expect from Sonic Youth is here. Complex twisting riffs, the classic guitar strum, artistic and at times confusing lyrics shared by Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon. However, those expecting a radical musical movement out of this album will be disappointed. Those expecting some classic Sonic Youth jams will not be.

The best track on the album from an musical standpoint is "Pink Steam," which is pure instrumentals for 5 out of the 6 total minutes. It is full of the skilled guitar playing Sonic Youth is known for, along with the half laid back feel of the rhythm section. The solos are excellent, adding a touch of distortion there and a touch of fuzz here, showing obvious maturity and musical skill, and creating a pure instrumental gem. Leave this one on repeat.

The entire album has a laid back feel, making it almost dull. "Jams Run Free" is slow moving, uneasy, and laced with Gordon’s stretched voice. "Lights Out" is the same way: slow moving and eerie. Finally there’s "Rats" which is again quieter, but has hints of The Doors, both in the vocals and instrumentals. Odd to hear from Sonic Youth, but odd is what Sonic Youth is about isn’t it?

Don’t come to "Rather Ripped" looking for a roller coaster ride of underground bliss, but late at night when the lights get turned low and you’re recovering from a long day, pop this in. The slow moving songs have a beauty to them, the lyrics are an enigma to unravel, and an ear can easily find a guitar note there, or a vocal croon here that sends shivers down the spine. A slow burner from Sonic Youth, but one that burns well.

Thanks to badgercorn

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/reviews/s...788049,00.html


Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped

 

(Geffen)

Dave Simpson
Friday June 2, 2006
The Guardian


Pop careers used to be such brief, sudden-impact affairs. The Doors came and went within five years; even the Beatles packed it all in inside eight. The Sex Pistols, bless 'em, said all they needed to with one album. These days, though, nobody ever stops. Thus, New York's favourite avant-punk noiseniks find themselves pondering a longevity they couldn't have imagined when they began experimenting with electric drills and weird tunings in 1981. Back then they can't have considered the fact that choosing a moniker aligning themselves with youth culture would one day be used by rock critics to attack them for having the temerity to grow old. Except that they haven't, spiritually. Rather Ripped (to the gills, presumably) has the lightness of touch and adventure you'd normally get from a band on their debut, not veteran explorers making their 21st album.

Having pioneered avant-grunge and subterranean punk-garde, Rather Ripped sees Sonic Youth reinventing themselves again. This is as close to a pop album as they've recorded. Discernible influences are not so much the usual Glenn Branca or the darker Velvet Underground but the Ronettes and the Crystals. Well, possibly. Kim Gordon's shared vocals have certainly never sounded sweeter; songs rattle along on a succession of killer bubblegum riffs from Thurston Moore, who sounds thrilled to discover a new dimension to his playing.Switching from producer Jim O'Rourke to self-production (alongside John Agnello) has given things an urgent, spontaneous feel. The band sound riotously playful. Turquoise Boy dabbles in psychedelia. The sublime Incinerate even cheekily mimicks Roxy Music's famous "kerr-angg" intro from Pyjamarama before blasting into sugar-bomb pop. And yet, beneath the froth, the old nihilism still lurks. The songs tell tales of madness, infidelity, homicidal urges and the rest: regular terrain for the Youth, but not within such pop confections. Rather Ripped may not have the cultural impact of 1989's Daydream Nation, but it contains some of the best music of their career. An extraordinary state of affairs in Sonic Youth's 25th year.

Thanks to Sir Paul Skinback obe
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/m...icle623334.ece

Note the Andy Gill is not the same one who plays in Gang of Four!


Album: Sonic Youth

 

Rather Ripped, GEFFEN

By Andy Gill

Published: 02 June 2006



Back to a quartet again with the departure of the sonic auxiliary Jim O'Rourke, Sonic Youth turn in one of their tighter, more focused sets with Rather Ripped, an album named after a celebrated underground comic book. It opens at the catchier end of the SY aesthetic with "Reena", which could almost be a straight-up pop song were it not for the typically oblique changes that lend a peppery edge to its hummability. Indeed, so typical have their once-perverse melodic twists become that it's now possible to predict the course of tracks such as "Jams Run Free" and "Sleepin' Around", the way their serpentine tunes habitually take the odd route through flats and sharps, favouring the bitter over the sweet. As "What a Waste" suggests, with its echoes of "Hong Kong Garden", it's a trope traceable to the early Banshees, here elected to a compositional principle. When it works, the effect is bracing, as in the blend of plaintive vocal, guitar harmonics and churning noise that makes up "Do You Believe In Rapture?", or the astringent combination of arpeggios and smouldering lead guitar in "Turquoise Boy"; but elsewhere, "Pink Steam" is a chugger, and "Incinerate" follows a drier, more methodical course.
DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Reena', 'Do You Believe in Rapture?', 'Turquoise Boy'

Back to a quartet again with the departure of the sonic auxiliary Jim O'Rourke, Sonic Youth turn in one of their tighter, more focused sets with Rather Ripped, an album named after a celebrated underground comic book. It opens at the catchier end of the SY aesthetic with "Reena", which could almost be a straight-up pop song were it not for the typically oblique changes that lend a peppery edge to its hummability. Indeed, so typical have their once-perverse melodic twists become that it's now possible to predict the course of tracks such as "Jams Run Free" and "Sleepin' Around", the way their serpentine tunes habitually take the odd route through flats and sharps, favouring the bitter over the sweet. As "What a Waste" suggests, with its echoes of "Hong Kong Garden", it's a trope traceable to the early Banshees, here elected to a compositional principle. When it works, the effect is bracing, as in the blend of plaintive vocal, guitar harmonics and churning noise that makes up "Do You Believe In Rapture?", or the astringent combination of arpeggios and smouldering lead guitar in "Turquoise Boy"; but elsewhere, "Pink Steam" is a chugger, and "Incinerate" follows a drier, more methodical course.

Thanks to sonik life

Phil Mongredien, Q Magazine 3/5 Stars

Art-rock veterans make most listenable album in years.

After losing their way in the late '90s, Sonic Youth have got a second wind. Rather Ripped follows on from 2004's impressive Sonic Nurse and is their most mature album to date, with songs taking centre stage and guitar squall used more selectively. Opener Reena bounces along happily, while the six-minute Turquoise Boy features some pretty and restrained guitar noodling. Best of all is The Neutral, Kim Gordon leading them in a summery pop direction. Only the dreary Do You Believe In Rapture? falls flat.

Thanks to GeneticKiss

From Guitar World magazine, August 2006:

"Some 25 years since their chaotic debut, Sonic Youth continue to find new ways to make unconventional tunings, dissonant musicianship and jarring arrangements irresistible. Rather Ripped, the group's 16th full studio album, combines the icy dreamscapes and haunting exorcisms of 1988's Daydream Nation with the more accessible song structures of 1990's Goo. Whether relying on clean, chiming chords and single plucked notes ("Incinerate"), eerie natural harmonics ("Do You Believe In Rapture?") or rock-out riffs and weird distorted licks ("What A Waste"), Sonic Youth demostrate rock's endless possibilities.

-Jon Wiederhorn"

Let the "Oh Yeah? When Was The Last Time They Were In The Magazine?"'s, "Posers! Everyone's Pretending To Be Indie These Days!"'s, and the "So Why Don't They Feature Bands That Actually Sound Like Them?"'s begin.

Thanks to amh

http://www.kevchino.com/index.aspx?review=939

Read
Full
Screen10OUT OF 10Diehard old school Sonic Youth fans are most likely taking a look at the cover art for Sonic Youth’s new album and peeing themselves with excitement. It hearkens back to the glory days of the band’s status as the rulers of the New York City no-wave scene. It’s a classic NYC punk rock logo: the band’s name emblazoned on a red backdrop in army lettering through an oozing blob of black paint. It looks punk rock as hell. Any person who misses the noise experiments of Bad Moon Rising and EVOL are probably thinking that Sonic Youth are making a triumphant return to their roots; dropping an all-out noise assault on the
sensitive indie types and neo-hippies that were into the clean, lazy summer jams of Murray Street and Sonic Nurse. Well, to those people, turn away and lock yourself in with your old SST LP’s because this is a much, much different band.

Rather Ripped is by far the most user-friendly, concise, polished effort that Sonic Youth have released up to this point, a further extension on the warm embrace of Sonic Nurse. However, that album had its fair share of challenges, what with most of the songs averaging a length of about seven minutes. The longest song on Rather Ripped is seven minutes, and most of the songs don’t pass the four minute mark. What used to take Sonic Youth five-to-ten minutes to do now takes them three, and notably absent from this album is the band’s inclination towards musical exploration. What was and, really, still is, the band’s trademarks are valleys and peaks, tension and release, and quiet-and-loud dynamics; and that usually took SY a long time to do in one song. But the trick of Rather Ripped is that the band has learned how to condense those experiments into four minute indie rock songs.

But enough about the change; the real question is, how are the songs? Well, this band has delivered another batch of excellent tracks, as evidenced by the 1-2-3 KO of the opening trilogy. “Reena” is a bouncy, poppy Kim Gordon number and it works to surprisingly good effect. There is a “noise” breakdown in the middle, but those quotation marks are meant to be much larger. It’s extremely brief, and not nearly as loud, atonal or abrasive as previous noise bridges on other SY tracks. “Incinerate” may be the most “rock” track here, but it’s nothing like older work by the band. And yet, these are really great songs, not just endless jams but real, tight numbers rather then compositions.

Some fans may be a little put off by Sonic Youth’s evolution from experimental no-wavers to indie rock tunesmiths, but it really doesn’t matter because the product speaks for itself. Rather Ripped is SY’s Terror Twilight, a somewhat conventional record for an otherwise experimental band as they approach the afterglow the next step of their storied career.

Thanks to atari 2600
from ew:

Sonic Youth
Rather Ripped
Once again a quartet after the departure of multi-instrumentalist Jim O'Rourke, the long-running avant-rock band release their 20th album. It's a softer, more introverted take on the classic SY sound than their last few outings, scaling back the noise and amping up the tunes.
6/13

http://www.timeout.com/london/music/...er_ripped.html

4/6 stars


The latest from NYC’s seminal art punks (now minus Jim O’Rourke) represents their classic sound circa ‘Daydream Nation’ and, landing so soon after The Futureheads’ new LP (to name just one example), serves as a potent reminder of how hugely influential they are still. Wide open tunings, white noise and distinctive, thrumming harmonics have sustained them for 25 years and this sweetly rapturous and grittily groovy treat is triumphant affirmation that age cannot wither the Yoof.
Sharon O’Connell, Tue May 30

http://www.markprindle.com/sonicya.htm#rather

8/10

Thee Temple Ov Psonick Youth is back with what I personally consider to be their finest bag of melodies since Washink Machine. Sure, they never change their sound, and certainly haven't done so here. But the appeal of these later Sonic Youth records that they keep releasing every few months is that, although they almost never deviate from the clean guitar tones they picked up a decade ago, and although you'll hear plenty of chord changes that you could've sworn you heard on Daydream Nation and every record since, the band is still capable of coming up with absolutely gorgeous music when it puts its mind to it. And this time, it's paid off in spades (black people)! If you've read this entire shitty page, you know what a Complain Wart I can be about this band, yet I wouldn't hesitate to sign a sealed court document accusing me of absolutely LOVING 7 of these 12 songs. They're uptempo, catchy, warm, memorable and audioically interesting. Let me explain in a bit more detail, in a new paragraph to be named later.

First of all, the songs are shorter and more succinct than they've been in ages, with a full seven of the tracks ending before the 4-minute mark. Secondly, nearly every song is uptempo. Thirdly, Kim's singing is not only tuneful but often downright beautiful, probably her finest work in the band's history (aside from those fatally missed high notes in "Jams Run Free"). Fourthly, in addition to a downright catchy collection of chord changes and arpeggios spread thoughout the disc, the band has crafted a number of fascinating new sounds for you, including ringing 'harmonics chords' in "Do You Believe In Rapture?," gorgeous Unrest-esque bass/guitar/guitar interplay in "Jams Run Free," hilariously sick funk bass and amp noise in "Rats," an unexpectedly low bottom note in "Lights Out," Minus The Bear-style intertwining guitar arpeggios in "The Neutral," and thick bassy heartbeat percussion thumping in "Or." So appreciate that. Most old people who pretend to be young (Neil Young, Angus Young, Henny Youngman) are either uninterested in or incapable of actual sound experimentabilism once they reach a certain age. But not old Sonic Young! You can count on me!
Sure, a few of the riffs are dangerously SY-by-retread ("Incinerate" in particular has hardly any reason to exist), but most are not. Buy it! Seriously! Buy it for the energetic tempos, hooky melodies and lovely, creative instrumental interplay ideas. And just try to ignore the fact that Thurston Moore, who sings 6 of the songs, is incapable of writing a vocal melody.
Isn't this neat? I seriously didn't think I'd ever be excited by a Sonic Youth album again! It's almost enough to make me go back and listen to the last few again to see if I'd like them more now. I probably won't do that, but what a thought, huh?
In closing, here's a joke, to start the review off with a bang:
What do you get when you cross Thurston Moore with a baboon's ass?
A baboon that farts the exact same notes it's playing on the guitar!
Oh! Also, Jim O'Rourke's not in the band anymore, so don't be all listening for his crazy noises.
Same for Jim Sclavunos, unfortunately. He will be missed.
If you listen real close though, you can hear Bob Bert and Ernie Kovacs guest s
Wait a second! Did you see that? I just said "Bert and Ernie"! Ha ha! I didn't even mean to do that! That's great! Ha ha!
You know what song is really great? Eddie Floyd's "Big Bird." It starts with this awesome g
HAY! Did you see that? I TOTALLY wrote "Big Bird" without even meaning to! What's crazy going on here? Maybe I've been snorting too much snuff, Leupa Gus!
Yes, Leupa Gus is a good friend of mine I like to do a shout-out to every once in a WAIT A SECOND! DID YOU SEE THAT???? I TOTALLY JUST URINATED OUT OF MY BELLY BUTTON!!!

http://feministing.com/archives/005130.html

Feministing Hearts Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth
Rather Ripped
Geffen Records (2006)
Indie rock legends Sonic Youth burst out of the summer music pack with their latest album, Rather Ripped, to be released June 13 on Geffen Records. Though predictably unpredictable in terms of musical experimentation, the group delivers its characteristic guitar renderings and thoughtful lyricism, appealing to devoted fans and new initiates alike.
The former five-piece has been trimmed to four, as producer and multi-instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke left the band to pursue his film studies. Over the final days of 2005 and into early this year, the band recorded and mixed twelve new songs, each with a touch of sonic splendor and liberation that SY is known for.
Rather Ripped begins with driving tracks “Reena” and “Incinerate” and quickly transitions to curious and midbeat “Do You Believe in Rapture?” The trademark guitar sound is present on “Sleeping Around” and “Turquoise Boy.” Quirky, art-punk verse is found throughout. On “Rats,” a song that speaks of closeness and separation with lyrics such as “You could be my open road/You could be the reason why/You could ease my heavy load/But I’m gonna freeze you out.”
For those familiar with Sonic Youth, the new album doesn’t map much new territory, but for newbies, the only thing you can expect about the noise rock troubadours is their inventiveness. The band’s appearance on the season finale of Gilmore Girls further confirms the group’s status in the mainstream. In sleepy album closer “Or,” co-vocalist Thurston Moore asks, “What comes first, the music or the words?” Thankfully for us, both aspects are present, strong and carry through to the end.

http://buluthim.blogspot.com/2006/05...d-2006_29.html

Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped (2006)


Rating:9.0
Modern Music Album Review:

 

After sonic nurse it's a great feeling to see that they are going on with their music.

Opening song Reena which contains high and low guitar melodies.Kim gordon's vocal is bringin more impression to this song.At the half of the song,guitars are starting to fly and they're flying with you and suddenly it's turning same ordinary melody.

Incinerate is first single and it has a calm melody,great but really it isn't best song from this album.You are slowing with Do You Believe In Rapture.This song is containing more experimental tunes.Sleepin Around is starting with restless and noisy guitar and really it has a wanderful opening.

After three Thurston Moore vocal,Kim gordon's singing What A Waste.It's a more regular melody,there's not any marked guitar melodies.In song Jams Run Free while Kim is singing normally and singing like a boring song,suddenly is changing and You're seeing a sound choke with a great noise theme.This is what we expecting from Sonic Youth,you think that you're listening an ordinary song,but it isn't an ordinary song.Music is changing suddenly and you're hooking up.

This album is really cramfull.You can see on Rats Thursten Moore's best vocal permormance on this album.On this song,melody suddenly changing to a brilliant and hot light.This changing is a guaranty which makes you falling love with this album.

Pink Steam is an indie song with no vocal and also we can say it's only instrumantel(but you'll see it's not) song ,airy,attractive.But Thursten Moore entering with his voice near end of the song and i suprised when first listen this song.There isn't a order melody on this song.all the time it's changing and i wanna say it's the best song on this album.Rather Ripped shows us music is still not dead and still there are good musicians.

bulut 1:23 AM

http://entertainment.timesonline.co....203187,00.html

Sonic Youth’s back catalogue is one of the most impressive and daunting in American art- rock. Some serious avant- garde records in the late 1990s scared their more timid fans. But recently there have been a number of rather unexpectedly accessible albums.

Rather Ripped may well be the most straightforward yet, with 12 driving and melodic New York rock songs that sometimes recall Television. The Youth’s trademark clang and squall is deployed with elegant discretion, so that the outstanding Pink Steam works as a mature précis of their old pyrotechnics. If you’ve always wanted to investigate this thrilling band, Rather Ripped might finally be a safe place to begin the adventure.
JOHN MULVEY

Possibly because it's actually a Lee song! :p (and sadly the only one here at that)

On my third listen now, perfect hot summer's day listening I feel. Not giving it a mark out of 10 for at least another week though...

Christgau, impressed.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/06...,73468,22.html



Rock & Roll &
Rather Exhilarating
The best band in the universe do their Brecht thing with hooks
by Robert Christgau
June 6th, 2006 3:58 PM






Three members of Sonic Youth pose with the American Idol winner
photo: Amanda DeCadenet
Forget "edge," or whatever the edgy are calling it these days. I wish we could forget their non-youth in the bargain, but that wheeze will remain with us—they create from what they know. So let me put it this way: Sonic Youth are the best band in the universe, and if you can't get behind that, that's your problem. They haven't made a bad album since Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, and Lee Ranaldo found perfect drummer Steve Shelley in 1985, and (forget Radiohead, forget Wilco) have released more good ones in the past decade than anyone in rock except—this is funny—Neil Young. That definitely includes the brand-new Rather Ripped, a light-seeming, unprecedentedly hooky thing that could prove one of their best. Ignore it to your spiritual detriment.
Sonic Nurse, the band's last record, and last of three with avant-young fifth member Jim O'Rourke, was noticeably direct and tuneful—but not, as it turned out, concise (eight of 10 tracks over five minutes), nor as bracingly aggressive as Goo or Dirty or Daydream Nation. Excellent, but hedged. On Ripped, seven of 12 tracks clock in under four minutes, and three more under five. But the radical departure is the new album's appearance of simplicity, especially regarding what means most with these guys: guitar sound.

Most SY guitars are thick, dirty, doubled, the better to amplify and complicate the weird scales that underlie music you can get lost in and quite often hum. On Rather Ripped, however, guitars are cleanly articulated, given over to tunelets and quasi-arpeggios that cycle through the songs like the good little hooks they are, so much so that when Moore and Ranaldo clash and rumble old-style—two minutes into "Sleepin' Around," on the Ranaldo horror movie "Rats," or the Gordon reverie "Turquoise Boy"—the effect is a reassuring return to normalcy. In other words, the Brechtian distance their dissonances stopped guaranteeing long ago is provided instead by super-catchy mock-pop devices—which eventually, sly devils, prove stranger harmonically than first impressions suggest. The singing, while not even mock pop—by normal standards of vocal intonation and soulful drama, this may be the least gifted great band ever—nudges their recitative tendencies toward a sweet, breathy, sincere counterpart of the guitars. Simple word choices and frequent repetitions make lyrics whose meaning never comes clear seem just out of reach.

All of which I find pretty exhilarating. Of course, you may not. When Murray Street came out in 2002, non-old Amy Phillips notoriously asserted in this very newspaper that since Sonic Youth hadn't made a good album since (1995's) Washing Machine, they should break up already. Who's to say her opinion isn't worth as much as mine? Me? Well, yeah. One concept the non-old have trouble getting their minds around is the difference between taste and judgment. It's fine not to like almost anything, except maybe Al Green. That's taste, yours to do with as you please, critical deployment included. By comparison, judgment requires serious psychological calisthenics. But the fact that objectivity only comes naturally in math doesn't mean it can't be approximated in art.

One technique, which I've just illustrated, is to replace response reports ("boring" and all its self-involved pals, like my "exhilarating" or Phillips's less blatant "dull") with stimulus reports. Here's another instance: Boring or not, 1998's A Thousand Leaves unquestionably marked a turn toward the quietude, ruminative structures, and general fuzz level always implicit in their unresolved tunings and Deadhead-manquéjams—tendencies tersely deployed on 1994's Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star and fulsomely indulged on Washing Machine's sandbagging 20-minute "The Diamond Sea." On Leaves, melodies were softer, lyrics kinder, instrumentals more atmospheric, and 2000's

NYC Ghosts & Flowers ran away with the freer tendencies of that approach. But ever since then, starting withMurray Street and working through Sonic Nurse and now Rather Ripped, Sonic Youth have reinvested in songform. It's so much more reliable than a 401(k).

Another objectivity aid is consensus, as indicated by record guides, online compendia, and of course critics polls. These establish that Murray Street is well liked, A Thousand Leaves and Sonic Nurse only a little less so. The dud by acclamation (perhaps even the "bad album" whose existence I deny) is NYC Ghosts, which Phillips acknowledges as the true inspiration for her kill-yr-idols hissy fit. Granted an excuse to replay every Sonic Youth album I own, I've found these judgments justifiable. Murray's song-soundscape fusion, which at the time I didn't quite get, sounded strong, while NYC Ghosts, whose meanderings had captivated me in their ambiently environmental way, never fully reconnected. Leaves, long my eccentric fave, proved marginally less entrancing as it sopped up its 74 minutes under lyric-parsing scrutiny. I'm disappointed in myself—I take pride in knowing when I've reconciled taste and judgment, and don't often get records wrong. But I still think the consensus is too extreme—and probably, given the way these things go, reactive, pumping Murray Street to make up for dismissing NYC Ghosts.

Thurston Moore claims Rather Ripped "isn't particularly different from any previous Sonic Youth releases," but that's just his fealty to his band's tunings talking—to a sonic signature that, having pretty much launched an alt-rock generation, is now counted boring by many non-old. Fact is, every Sonic Youth album varies within the broad boundaries of their guitaristic practices. In that capacious context, A Thousand Leaves did mark a turning point, which reflects not just the deterioration that afflicts human bodies as they turn 40 into 50, but also, if you'll pardon some biography, Kim and Thurston's absorption of the parenthood they undertook in 1994: the extra pressure, the lost time, the future that subsumes your own, the messy roommate you love to pieces. Concomitantly, the words of that album, insofar as they make sense, evoke a maturing marriage in a lyrical phase, with Kim's "Female Mechanic Now on Duty" adding essential sex appeal. On Ripped, which shares its name with a legendary Berkeley record store, a similar union may be rather riven, or may not. The non-old clearly aren't obliged to care about these things. But critics of any age ought to recognize that they're there.

Sonic Youth have certainly written lyrics that stick—for my taste, most often about music ("Dirty Boots," "New Hampshire") or politics ("Kool Thing," "Youth Against Fascism"). But where their opposite numbers Yo La Tengo put Ira and Georgia's love life on the public record, Sonic Youth don't seem to sing about Kim and Thurston. It's that Brechtian distance thing again, magnified by vocal deficiencies they play as strengths. Does Kim have a girlfriend on the side? Is her "What a waste/You're so chaste" directed at "Turquoise Boy"? How about Thurston's "Sleepin' Around"? In the end, I don't much care. What matters to me is how these unresolved intimations are allayed and disarmed by the uncharacteristic lightness of music that nevertheless gets strange when you listen hard.

Edges dull; the shock of the new gets old. But great bands keep creating from what they know, and figuring it out as they do. Try to see 'em at CB's Tuesday. They'll come up with something you don't expect, guaranteed.


Sonic Youth play CBGB with Tall Firs Tuesday, June 13. Sold-out as hell.

http://www.kingblind.com/

Sonic Youth:: Rather Ripped (Album Review)

You keep me coming home again" sings Kim Gordon four seconds into the
new Sonic Youth album, Rather Ripped. And like every other Sonic Youth
adventure before, it does feel like home. You know it's Sonic Youth,
it sounds like Sonic Youth, but this time it's a different Sonic
Youth. A little older, a little wiser. I'm just gonna blurt this out,
this is the record Television should have made after "Marquee Moon."
That's a bold statement huh?

Well, let me back myself into a corner here....and get ready to
attack!

The guitar playing of Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo is genius.
Bringing to mind the guitar antics of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd.
They never play the same thing. Choosing to texture the guitars
perfectly to create a dreamy atmosphere. One plays the rythm, while
the other plays the leads and fills. Kim Gordon is not Fred Smith,
although she does provide a steady bass and her singing has gotten
much better. In fact, she sings a good share of the songs on this
record, which I really like. she's grown in to her voice as she's
become older, reminds me of Nico, only better. Steve Shelley provides
the muscular backbeat the same way Billy Ficca did. So see, that's not
really that far removed from the truth. And besides, who really liked
"Adventure" anyways? With that behind us, let's talk shop...

Now here's where I share the secret with you. This is a rock and roll
record. This isn't Sonic Youth thumbing their noses at traditional
rock and roll conventions. This isn't the youthful exubarance of past.
Gone is utility player Jim O'Rourke. I told you, this is a grown up
Sonic Youth. It doesn't make the record bad though. In fact, this is
my favorite new Sonic Youth record since "Dirty. "Rather Ripped shows me a band that has been able to change, grow, and reinvent itself throughout a 25 year history. A collection of individuals with a common bond of making music, functioning as a whole, creating soundscapes for the future. Not too long ago, Daydream Nation was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of
Congress. Now What? Huh? See, the future!!!

From time to time, the old Sonic Youth shines through, especially on songs
like "Pink Steam" and "Jams Run Free."Don't let that fool you, there is no future without a past. Overall, his is an excellent record. All of the songs are great. "Rather Ripped" has moved on to my best of the year radar and made me a believer that Sonic Youth is still important today as they ever were.
(Review by:: Casey Schroeder)

http://www.thespacelab.tv/spaceLAB/2...SonicYouth.htm

Space Ghost reviews Rather Ripped! .....from outter space.!!!!!!

http://www.calendarlive.com/music/re...-utility-right

AFTER several years with producer-guitarist Jim O'Rourke as a fifth member, Sonic Youth has scaled back to its original lean four-piece — fittingly, as this is the band at its most intimate. The SY love album? Well, yes, starting off with Kim Gordon breathily cooing, "You keep me coming home again," in the opening song, "Reena," perhaps the bubbliest (and non-ironically so) pop song of the band's 25-year career as an alternative pace setter.

Of course, this is love and pop through SY's revealing lens. The former is anything but straightforward, with Gordon and fellow singers-writers Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo exploring various, often contradictory, constituents and corollaries — security, dependence, lust, affection, friendship, obsession, infidelity, paranoia. There's even faith in "Do You Believe in Rapture?" where the end times may or may not be a metaphor for earthly love.

And there are still plenty of the band's familiar musical leaps into the void with free-floating instrumental diversions and digressions. But most striking is the abundance of catchy melodies, smartly and effectively handled — not by the limited (if expressive) singers, but by the guitars, with many songs marked by simple yet hummable leads. It almost makes you wonder what would have happened if Television and Peter Frampton had worked together. That's a compliment.

By the final song, "Or," a somber sketch of a fan or friend, the band seems drained and exhilarated. Sounds like love.

Steve Hochman

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home...youthx05x06x06

Rather Ripped
Album Review
For a band to be able to get to the point in their career where they release their 21st album, whilst similarly being able to defy what is expected of them and once again show a new side to their character, is a feat of true genius.

Sonic Youth, the pioneers and influencers of so much of the left-field guitar music that we know and love return on this album that is instantly accessible, unlike perhaps some of their earlier works.

This is perhaps as close to a feel-good pop record as they will ever get, but by god it’s close! This is quirky bubblegum stuff, but done the Sonic Youth way with a sense of real honesty, and dare it be said, enjoyment. The vocals still have that unmistakeable tonal quality, and the dissonant edges still lurk in the background, but this is a real landmark release for the now not-so-youthful crew. Delightful.

Richard Edge

I agree with this guy

http://www.playlouder.com/review/+rather-ripped/
Rather Ripped
Sonic Youth



4/5

A quarter of a century on from their inception in a furious blizzard of New York art noise Sonic Youth still live up to the noun in their name. Live, Thurston Moore brims with youthful enthusiasm, flopping his blonde locks around, clambering up speaker stacks and gadding about like a public school boy playing rockstars. Kim Gordon still looks incredible in attire most commonly suited to Top Shop girls, while the band's adherence to a DIY aesthetic continues to convey the enthusiasm of a stamp-collecting teenage nerd.

So what's interesting about 'Rather Ripped' is how Sonic Youth have at once made their most mature album, yet left none of their trademark edginess on the cutting room floor. It's worth noting, though, that the praise being lauded on 'Rather Ripped' over any of Sonic Youth's album's over the past few years is perhaps misguided. This isn't necessarily a superior album to 'Murray Street' or 'Sonic Nurse' (though it's certainly a more consistent one), it's more that 'Rather Ripped's great success is in refining the strengths of those records to something at once accessible and challenging.

This is done through the recurrent musical methodology of 'Rather Ripped' - and it's one that makes the album's buff title rather appropriate. For the likes of 'What A Waste' and 'The Neutral' a simple skin of guitar melody is locked tight to Kim Gordon's vocal line as the rhythm section plays a rippling and muscular groove beneath, while in the chorus Sonic Youth allow themselves the modicum of messing around with distortion.

The vocals (indeed, Moore and Gordon's almost meditative tones are superb throughout 'Rather Ripped') drive 'Do You Believe In Rapture?' to be as reflective as Sonic Youth have ever been, while 'Jams Run Free' positively skips along with a jovial lightness before the last thirty seconds are dappled with restrained, yet insistent, guitar murmer. 'Rats', meanwhile, is built around a dense back wall of growling feedback, atop which a dappled melody is allowed to sprawl.

And of course, 'Rather Ripped' takes some fine wanders into the twilight. The six-minute 'Turquoise Boy' builds gradually until, when you're least expecting it, Sonic Youth unleash a driven, howling crescendo, Steve Shelley's drums tumping moodily in the background. It's followed by 'Lights Out', which sees Thurston murmuring dark threats, while penultimate track 'Pink Steam' is another longer, furious- sounding number.

The only weak spot is the final track 'Or', where Sonic Youth finally succumb to the cliché of having a bit of a moan about the day job, with Moore wearily reciting a list of dumb questions PlayLouder's lesser contemporaries all-too-frequently fling at them: "What comes first? The music or the words?"

But this concluding blip aside 'Rather Ripped' is the most accomplished and mature album Sonic Youth have done in years. And while some might grumble that this new-found sense of calm (and, indeed, a peculiar absence of pretension) is too much of a concession to the mainstream, they can always took to any of the band's challenging side-projects for more malignant diversions. And it's interesting that this album is Sonic Youth's final obligation for Geffen. Could 'Rather Ripped' be a graceful bowing out of the mainstream, before an onslaught from the incredible hulk of their avant-garde inclinations?

Luke Turner

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/m...icle623334.ece

Album: Sonic Youth

 

Rather Ripped, GEFFEN

By Andy Gill

Published: 02 June 2006



Back to a quartet again with the departure of the sonic auxiliary Jim O'Rourke, Sonic Youth turn in one of their tighter, more focused sets with Rather Ripped, an album named after a celebrated underground comic book. It opens at the catchier end of the SY aesthetic with "Reena", which could almost be a straight-up pop song were it not for the typically oblique changes that lend a peppery edge to its hummability. Indeed, so typical have their once-perverse melodic twists become that it's now possible to predict the course of tracks such as "Jams Run Free" and "Sleepin' Around", the way their serpentine tunes habitually take the odd route through flats and sharps, favouring the bitter over the sweet. As "What a Waste" suggests, with its echoes of "Hong Kong Garden", it's a trope traceable to the early Banshees, here elected to a compositional principle. When it works, the effect is bracing, as in the blend of plaintive vocal, guitar harmonics and churning noise that makes up "Do You Believe In Rapture?", or the astringent combination of arpeggios and smouldering lead guitar in "Turquoise Boy"; but elsewhere, "Pink Steam" is a chugger, and "Incinerate" follows a drier, more methodical course.
DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Reena', 'Do You Believe in Rapture?', 'Turquoise Boy'

Back to a quartet again with the departure of the sonic auxiliary Jim O'Rourke, Sonic Youth turn in one of their tighter, more focused sets with Rather Ripped, an album named after a celebrated underground comic book. It opens at the catchier end of the SY aesthetic with "Reena", which could almost be a straight-up pop song were it not for the typically oblique changes that lend a peppery edge to its hummability. Indeed, so typical have their once-perverse melodic twists become that it's now possible to predict the course of tracks such as "Jams Run Free" and "Sleepin' Around", the way their serpentine tunes habitually take the odd route through flats and sharps, favouring the bitter over the sweet. As "What a Waste" suggests, with its echoes of "Hong Kong Garden", it's a trope traceable to the early Banshees, here elected to a compositional principle. When it works, the effect is bracing, as in the blend of plaintive vocal, guitar harmonics and churning noise that makes up "Do You Believe In Rapture?", or the astringent combination of arpeggios and smouldering lead guitar in "Turquoise Boy"; but elsewhere, "Pink Steam" is a chugger, and "Incinerate" follows a drier, more methodical course.

http://www.thelmagazine.com/4/11/mus...w4.cfm?ctype=2

Sonic YouthRather Ripped (Geffen)By Peter D’Angelo
Within the first five seconds of Rather Ripped, Sonic Youth fans who’ve felt completely ripped off by their last few releases are likely to breathe a sigh of relief. In the album opener, ‘Reena,’ there’s a beat, there’s a solid melodic riff, and there’s Kim Gordon singing — not whispering or screaming, but performing an actual structured song. It’s followed by ‘Incinerate’, a slowly drawled Thurston Moore number that sits amid wonderfully sunny guitar melodies. And that’s when it kicks in— more so than on any work they’ve released in the last ten years, Sonic Youth have once again come off as a completely solid and relevant band. Instead of a noisy estimate of the defining moments in some lost Branca symphony, Rather Ripped harkens back to the divinely melodic guitar rock era of Experimental Jet Set, Washing Machine, and even Dirty. For a band known as much for their noisy musical advances as they are for their longevity, a smart, late-career take on pop music could most certainly play out as a total disaster. Instead it’s a high-minded success that finds its greatest moments in songs like the subtly political should-be-a-single ‘Do You Believe In Rapture?’, the spacey Lee Ranaldo tweak-out of ‘Rats’, and the droning exit music of ‘Or’.

Fifteen years ago a second wave of fans were getting introduced to Sonic Youth through their first bits of mass-exposure and a number of records on which they reigned in their at times unwieldy experimental sounds and helped redefine the way folks looked at mainstream rock. Many of those who discovered that music traced it back, discovering its roots in pure sonic experimentation and a world of outsider sounds. Sonic Youth still stand at that gateway, and if they can put out a record like this every few years, the rest of the world may someday learn the true value of all the noise that spawned them — and more importantly, all the noise they spawned.

http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid14056.aspx
Sonic Youth


Rather Ripped | Geffen
By: NICK SYLVESTER

6/6/2006 9:44:18 AM
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DAYDREAM NOTIONS: There’s less teenage riot and more pinpoint dissonance on Sonic Youth’s best since ’95’s Washing Machine. We’re allowed to like albums about getting old but never being old, so I don’t know why this one works — SY’s most openly “mature” disc, possibly their best since ’95’s Washing Machine, maybe even the almighty Daydream Nation. The clean, nimble strumming that opens “Reena” and Kim Gordon’s first belt (“You keep me coming home again”) and the way she holds the “gain” of “again” instead of letting the note resolve really couldn’t serve as a better proem: less teenage riot, more pinpoint dissonance; fewer facefucking abstractions, more hand-in-hand face-to-face. Two songs later, Thurston Moore asks, “Do you believe in a second chance?” Hell if I know what adult-oriented themes he’s hitting on — this is a ballad, by the way — but for the first time maybe ever, I wish I did. What’s funny is that Moore goes the opposite direction, too. “I tore your heart out from your chest/Replaced it with a grenade blast,” he sings in “Incinerate,” whose billowing guitars would pass for Dinosaur Jr.’s before SY’s. I’d call it bad high-school poetry if it weren’t so perfectly bad — as if SY were artifying high-school poetry, turning it into its own genre, something I’ve thought all along. No wonder Geffen reissued their first albums this year.

I don't like this one:

http://torontosun.com/Entertainment/...25454-sun.html
By BILL HARRIS, TORONTO SUN

3 1/2 out of 5




Expectations were low as Sonic Youth's Rather Ripped slipped into the CD player.
First of all, it's hard to believe Sonic Youth still is putting out new studio CDs after a full quarter-century as a band. What more could they have to say, musically or lyrically, that they couldn't have said by, say, 1996?
And, second of all, Sonic Youth always has been a tad overrated, at least to our ears. Even in their heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they weren't as daring as some of their alt-rock contemporaries, and also not as accessible as the more mainstream grunge acts of the day.
So imagine our shock and surprise that Rather Ripped doesn't suck.
Embracing melody more than in their past, Sonic Youth -- which champions itself as being in something called "nucleus formation" with Thurston Moore on guitar and vocals, Kim Gordon on bass and vocals, Lee Ranaldo on guitar and vocals, and Steve Shelley on drums -- rarely has sounded more comfortable and coolly confident.

Of the 12 songs here, it's fair to say too many of them are of the mid-tempo variety. But none of them are outright stinkers, and a couple of the sparse ones jump above the fray.
The third song is called Do You Believe In Rapture?, and that rhetorical question apparently was in the running to be the title of this CD. Regardless, the song is set to a hypnotic heartbeat march and the stark guitar harmonics straddle the line between grating and grandeur.
At only 3 minutes and 11 seconds, Do You Believe In Rapture? leaves you wanting more. But that's a good thing.
Also irresistible in a weird, Velvet Underground sort of way is the closing track, Or. The final pulsating verse seemingly presents a list of all the inane questions veteran rock bands have endured from wide-eyed (or bleary-eyed) fans, over and over and over again:
"How long's the tour?
"What time you guys playin'?
"Where you goin' next?
"What comes first ... the music ... orrrrrrr ... the words?"
The word "or" is accentuated and elongated in a breathless manner that expresses both weariness and acceptance.
Those two songs are personal favourites, but there are other good moments, too.
Gordon -- whose voice sounds more like Nico's with each passing year -- is a little scary as she barks out the chorus to What A Waste ("What a waste, you're so chaste, I can't wait, to taste your face"). Uh, don't we want to share a soda with two straws first?
And the song Rats could have served as the theme to the movie Willard (at least it may have worked better than Michael Jackson's Ben). With Jimi Hendrix-style instrumentation setting the spooky tone, the lyrics go, "When the rats run riot, and the screen door slams, when the trees grow quiet, nothing but cats and cans."
We have absolutely no idea what that means, but it accurately describe the sensation of staggering home drunk at 4 in the morning. Maybe that's how the title Rather Ripped materialized.
Back when Sonic Youth was youthful, it's unlikely the members of the group ever imagined they still would be making records in 2006.
Sonic Youth certainly could have retired long before now, and no one would have minded. But if they still can produce CDs as listenable as Rather Ripped, there's absolutely no harm in extending this Sonic Middle Age. ---

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p...0:odq67u5050jk
by Heather Phares
4/5

Considering that Sonic Youth lost Jim O'Rourke and found the custom-tweaked, irreplaceable guitars that were stolen in 1999 before heading into the studio to make Rather Ripped, it seemed that the album could be a big departure from what they'd been doing on Murray Street and Sonic Nurse -- possibly a return to the kind of music they could only make with those instruments, or perhaps an entirely different approach that reflected their revamped, old-is-new-again lineup. Rather Ripped ends up being of a piece with their previous two albums, and often plays like a stripped-down, slightly less-inspired Sonic Nurse. Once again, Kim Gordon contributes some of the best tracks here; "Reena" and "Jams Run Free" are equal parts dreamy and driving, while "The Neutral" is a sweet, low-key love song. Thurston Moore contributes a gently but powerfully political track à la Sonic Nurse's "Peace Attack" with "Do You Believe in Rapture?," a reflection on peace and apocalypse that's mostly serene, even if the guitar harmonics throughout the song add shivers of doubt and tension. "Rats" is a standard-issue Lee Ranaldo song, freewheeling and poetic (and with lines like "Let me place you in my past/With other precious toys," it has the sharpest lyrics on Rather Ripped), even if it's not quite as amazing as the previous album's "New Hampshire." Rather Ripped's rock songs are solid, but not amazing -- the interplay of Moore's and Ranaldo's guitars and Steve Shelley's drumming are the best things about "Sleepin' Around" and "What a Waste." Actually, the more atmospheric songs end up being some of the most compelling. "Lights Out" reeks of whispery, late-night cool, and the closing track, "Or," is one of the sparest and most oddly unsettling songs Sonic Youth has done in a while (not to mention a reminder that quiet doesn't always mean peaceful in this band's world). Rather Ripped is also surprisingly lean, with the songs on its first half feeling so tightly structured that they seem like radio edits. Only "Turquoise Boy" and "Pink Steam" really open up and deliver Sonic Youth's famously sprawling, jam-based sound. If Rather Ripped is a tiny bit disappointing, it's only because the band's playing outpaces their songwriting ever so slightly. It's a solidly good album, and if taken as part of a trio of albums with Sonic Nurse and Murray Street, it shows that Sonic Youth is still in a comfortable yet creative groove, not a rut.

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/musicrev...onic_youth.htm
Rather Ripped
Geffen, 2006
rating: 3/5
reviewer: grigsby

Being born a bit too late and without the proper context, I really can't say that Daydream Nation is my favorite SY album. Sure, I'll acknowledge that it is likely the most significant, and also that it is truly great, but my favorite? Not really. While Murray Street and Sonic Nurse aren't necessarily my favorites either, I found both to be immensely satisfying, showing that the band was still willing to extend its grasp, succeeding brilliantly.

Reaching for something is precisely the opposite of what's happening on Rather Ripped. Instead, SY have focused inward toward the songs. It turns out, though, that this isn't their greatest strength. They've always been about taking songs into outer space, not writing the most slammin' pop songs. Rather Ripped, then, harkens back to that much maligned, but still pretty dang decent, SY album, Experimental, Jet Set, Trash, and No Star. That too was the Youth at their most tame and song-oriented.

I seem to be forgetting something, though. Oh, that's right, this is gosh darned Sonic Youth we're talking about. They write better music in their sleep than most bands ever will. Just check out the opener "Reena." This is SY channeled into pure energy. "Pink Steam" is fantastic, though perhaps because it sounds like a streamlined version of the Murray Street template. The problem is that these songs just don't weigh in like SY greats really should. They're not underwritten – it's more the case that they need to be a bit overwritten.

So, to take it back to context for a moment: if Rather Ripped had come on the heels of NYC Ghosts and Flowers, it would be rightly hailed as a comeback. Instead, it is coming after two albums I would not hesitate to call "classics." By comparison, Rather Ripped comes off as a collection of good-and-great songs, but it just isn't up there with their best.

i would agree with that review

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record...r-ripped.shtml
Rating: 7.5
-Brandon Stosuy

The title of Sonic Youth's newest album references a defunct Berkeley, Calif., record store, but it's also a fitting description for the band's tautest set in 25 years. As the militaristic stencils on the cover suggest, these 12 tracks add up to one super chiseled physique; critics needn't exaggerate Rather Ripped's concision, though, Sonic Youth manage to sneak in all sorts of noisy accents, oddball tunings, and crescendo transitions into their so-called pop record.

That, and it's a grower. After my initial runs through, I appreciated the pristine guitar sound, but the majority of the songs felt boring (over time hooks bloomed). Yet it also proves that New York's premiere avant-garde group can write catchy tunes without dipping too deeply into its bag of cracked guitar tricks. Doused with sleek and slippery riffs, the album's early succession of propulsive, three-minute art-pop songs is especially strong.

The other most striking aspect of the album is that there are more Kim Gordon tracks than on most recent outings. She makes good use of the face time, turning in her best work since "Kissibility" and "Kool Thing". On "Reena" she reminds someone, presumably husband/bandmate Thurston Moore, that "you keep me coming home again," despite her, uh, intense friendship with another woman. Both it and her "Turquoise Boy" feature brief Glenn Branca-like breakdowns before returning to Lee Ranaldo and Moore's shiny guitar playing. On the slinky "Jams Run Free", Gordon breathily intones, "We love the jams." Rather Ripped has plenty of those.

Moore's first vocal turn comes on the catchy slip'n'slide single "Incinerate." Not an update of Big Black's "Kerosene", it [could] MAY be a love song with over-cooked metaphors or perhaps some actual immolation: "I ripped your heart of your chest/ Replaced it with a grenade blast...you dosed my soul with gasoline/ You flicked a match into my brain."

The strongest track is "Do You Believe in Rapture". Set against a backwash of noise, 16-carat "Bull in the Heather" strums, and the coupling of a lightly thumping drum machine witj Steve Shelley on the real deal, it feels like Daydream Nation's piano burning "Providence" turned inside out by Yo La Tengo. Out of nowhere (or maybe out of one guitar strand), it shifts into pop prettiness.

Somewhere just after the middle of the album, things loose a little oomph, especially on ho-hum tour-diary closer "Or". (Though some of its spare sound does echo "Do You Believe in Rapture".) On it, Moore begins by describing a girl with "canisters of whipped cream" in her "sweater pockets" and ends recounting various fan questions, culminating with the queries: "What comes first? The music or the words?" On this one, it was hopefully the music. There are a couple late-stage keepers: "The Neutral"'s crystalline guitar parts drop like snow (again, it's a Kim track) and the longer "Pink Steam", a slow-build Moore lust song, is gorgeously windswept and violently romantic.

The latter brings up something important: "Pink Steam"'s named after a great collection of diaristic essays, confessional memoirs, and literary tidbits by San Francisco author Dodie Bellamy. I didn't need to look that one up but as a kid, I used Sonic Youth lyrics and liner notes as reading lists-- they led me to Gerhard Richter, Mike Kelley, Richard Kern, Raymond Carver, d.a. levy, and more. They've always been important for bringing downtown NYC's overlapping traditions of art/music/literature to punk kids. Go back to those early records to check out who did the art work for them and read the thank you's. Pre-internet, this was the way to get an underground education.

Talking to Moore recently for Pitchfork, he said noise's popularity and accessibility seems as a good reason as any to create a relatively noise-free album. He's right: Sonic Youth needn't bother impressing folks at this point. That history can also work against them, but it's boring to parade out each classic and see just how Rather Ripped stacks up to it. So, hey, let's just say it's great to hear Kim, Lee, Steve, and Thurston making an album that sounds beautifully invigorated and goes down smoothly.

Critics' Choice
New CD's
By BEN RATLIFF
Published: June 12, 2006
Sonic Youth


Readers’ Opinions
Forum: Popular Music

"Rather Ripped" (Geffen)

Sonic Youth is 25, and its 20th album appears tomorrow. You may forget that math, or you may fixate on it. What was Sonic Youth's past, in larger terms, anyway? What did the band stand for, except unorthodox guitar tunings, overtones, conceptual art, popular culture (inasmuch as it could be related to conceptual art), inside jokes, fanzines and — somewhat skeptically — rock 'n' roll?

Perhaps not having the burden of a cause made it easier for Sonic Youth to persist. Certainly it is the rare example of a hard-touring group that often appeared to be having fun: throwing its weight behind new bands with no commercial future (as well as one that did: Nirvana), singing lyrics that have occasionally been pretentious or silly, playing long jams with dissonant gobs of noise, playing new-wavey eighth-note riffs.

Everyone has a different idea of what Sonic Youth's best record is because none are in any way perfect; they all contain various failures. But "Rather Ripped" has a different level of authoritative power. It is a fully legitimate, clear and strong rock 'n' roll record in the band's own style. And it may really be the best one, though one fears that saying it out loud means the band's work is done.

Sonic Youth had its own cloistered sound, defined by its tunings, in the beginning. I remember being fully spooked by all that indirect, ugly-beautiful tonality as a teenager, seeing the band at CBGB in 1983. (The band returns there to play a sold-out show tomorrow night before starting its summer tour.) But Sonic Youth is still here because its four members said yes to so many things: no music within their reach was too goofy or too refined.

As squalid as it liked to sound, overturning standard uses for amplifiers and effects boxes — and with an interest in Cage, Reich, Wolff, Cardew and post-classical music — there was always a classic-rock band inside Sonic Youth, ever since it first got a taste of writing a strong melody. (Those melodies appeared on "Evol," in 1986.)

That classic-rock band is what you hear in a lot of "Rather Ripped," still combining its billowing and liquefying guitar sounds, but condensing and concentrating them.

Here's how it works. On "Jams Run Free," Kim Gordon finishes her psychosexual, color-field lyrics 2 minutes 10 seconds into the song. ("I love the way you move/I hope it's not too late for me/It's too good on this sea/Where the light is green.") Immediately a rhythm-section vamp locks in, and the two guitars go at each other, one playing plinky harmonic tones and one discharging broad vales of fuzz. Thirty seconds later the guitars come together to play five notes in unison and two in harmony; then they pull apart as the drums gallop toward a blastoff, which happens at 3:20, opening into another riff, in a new, hazy, beautiful territory of sound. It's over at 3:50, and wow, it is satisfying.

Ms. Gordon is the glory of this record. For so long she has made her voice breathy and plain, at the edge of losing control, like a possessed Nico. Still, she has been only half there. Over the last 10 years she has become more central — playing more guitar, too, rather than bass — and on "Rather Ripped" she does something unusual: she sings forthrightly and in tune, making "Reena," "Turquoise Boy" and "Jams Run Free" the record's best tracks.

All Sonic Youth albums end with a question mark; this one literally does. Its last track, "Or," rumbles along quietly with an acoustic guitar and no climax. It has the purposeless atmosphere of a song that could drag on for 20 minutes, but it is brought home in 3½, ending with Thurston Moore's recitation of the kind of questions he probably hears a lot: "How long is the tour?/What time you guys playing?/Where you going next?/What comes first? The music? Or the words?" BEN RATLIFF

Sonic Youth go pop?! Oh yes. And it's rather good.

Perhaps, Sonic Youth have never sounded so much like everyone else around them than they have here. A couple of moments even struck as being vaguely Snow Patrol-esque. Certainly, the lead guitar throughout is bluesy, melodic, and thoroughly normal - not what you'd expect from these noiseniks. Noise throughout is kept in check, and used sparingly as a weapon rather than a bedrock - see the second verse of the excellent "Do You Believe In Rapture"? And songs. There are 12 honest-to-God songs here! Songs that could appear on any (good) album! Songs that could easily be reinvented as acoustic numbers! Don't come looking for a "Mote" or a "Ghost Bitch".

The opening trio of "Reena", "Incinerate", and "Do You Believe In Rapture?" set out the stall right from the off, and are the highpoint of the album. In fact, the understated, lovely "Incinerate" might be the band's strongest tune since "100%".

So Sonic Youth have never been so easy to like, so thoroughly normal. If you think a band maturing like this constitutes 'selling out' (whatever that means) then don't bother looking this one up. Everyone else can rest assured that this is still the same band that made Goo, and their idiosyncracies bring a power to these songs that a lesser band wouldn't have been able to achieve (just look to "Rats", Ranaldo's sole contribution, for an example of that).

This band will likely never top what they did over the course of the four albums stretching from Sister to [i[Dirty[/i]. And that's fine. They certainly don't disgrace themselves with an album as solid and enjoyable as Rather Ripped, and if they keep this up, I look forward to many more albums to come.

Rated:

swore up and down that I'd be disappointed if Rather Ripped offered more Sonic Youth lite...which it pretty much does, but I'm actually not disappointed at all. This is the best SY album since the underrated A Thousand Leaves, and it's also the most immediately accessible record they've ever made. It isn't perfect, but I'll deal with filler like "Sleepin' Around" and "Lights Out" if it means I get "Do You Believe in Rapture?", "Jams Run Free", and "Pink Steam", which are some of the greatest SY tunes ever. Sonic Youth's trailblazing days are long gone, but they're in a really great position right now: they're already legends, they have nothing to prove, and everyone will be happy as long as they keep putting out very good Sonic Youth albums, which they seem to be able to do pretty effortlessly these days. They've aged more gracefully than any other band I can think of at the moment. You can make a pretty good analysis of just about any Sonic Youth album by breaking it down according to who sings on which track, and looking at each one's shit-vs-hit quotient, so here's the breakdown for Rather Ripped:

- Thurston: the 2 worst on the album (as mentioned above), but also 2 of the best (also mentioned above), and a couple of pretty good tunes in "Incinerate" and "Or".

- Kim: for maybe the first time ever, there are no bad Kim songs.

- Lee: only gets 1 tune (what the hell?), "Rats"...but it's the weirdest track on the album, and it goes without saying that a Lee song is going to rule...Lee Ranaldo is a god, by far the coolest person in Sonic Youth...can't wait for the solo singer-songwriter album.

- Steve Shelley: he came in and played drums again.

Great album.

Rated:

Well, I loved the mostly mellow Sonic Nurse and this one's even quieter, so if you didn't dig it just go ahead and keep shaking your head and move on to some other review that pans this, because all I'm gonna say is why I think this is a really good record even if it falls short of a masterpiece. Clearly, this is Sonic Youth working new territory (for them) - never before have they been so straightforward, so conventionally melodic - but whether you're interested in hearing Sonic Youth work the territory that a hundred or a thousand other bands do is the real question you ought to be asking yourself before checking this out. Kim sings, for one. No artsy flat-toned sing-song, she really sings. I mean, it's not like you're gonna be asking yourself what dulcet-toned angel they hired to take over vocal duties, but there are clear melodies, never a given when Kim's at the microphone. Thurston's always been the band's stalwart rocker and he continues to deliver here. Lee puts forth with songs - and more importantly, melodies yet again - to match the other two as well. Lyrically I haven't quite absorbed it yet, but poetry readings and punk ranters are kept out, and favor is given to the personal observations and peace & love vibes that they've been doling out more and more frequently since A Thousand Leaves, maybe even Washing Machine. I've always thought of A Thousand Leaves as a demarcation point just like Goo and even Sister; it's one of those divisive albums that fans from "before" point to as when things started to go wrong for the band and fans from "after" point to as the album that got them into the band (usually to note the next demarcation point as the "things went wrong" album). The fact that they've grown, evolved, changed, morphed, mutated, whatever-you-wanna-call-it enough for them to have three such points tells me they're just another great rock band working as adults in their chosen career with a disregard to what's expected of them. That's punk enough for me and I hope they continue as long as they can, but maybe the fact the they're just another great rock band working as adults in their chosen career is enough to turn you off. Give a listen and see what you think and let me know.

Rated:

from rateyourmusic.com

My review (in french)

Après l'écoute de Rather Ripped, une seule chose est sure - ou presque -: ce n'est pas avec cet album que ceux qui ont laché Sonic Youth depuis la période allant de Goo à Experimental Jet Set Trash And No Star reviendront. Pour les autres, et en particulier ceux qui avaient apprécié Sonic Nurse, le nouvel album du groupe new yorkais a de grandes chances d'être un très bon disque. Je fais personnellement partie de cette catégorie, et c'est donc sans surprise que j'adore Rather Ripped.

Cet album est incontestablement l'un des plus pop du groupe, comme le prouvent d'entrée Reena et Incinerate. La durée des morceaux a considérablement rétréci: Sonic Youth nous avait habitué à des titres durant plus de 6/7 minutes, alors qu'ici la moitié des titres dure moins de 4 minutes et seulement deux durent plus de 6. On y retrouve également des éléments totalement inédits dans des albums de Sonic Youth, principalement regroupés dans les morceaux Do You Believe In Rapture? et Or - et encore plus particulièrement sur ce dernier. Do You Believe In Rapture, avec son tempo lent et son riff hypnotique basé sur des harmoniques arpégées, soutenu par une batterie qui utilise principalement ses cymbales; une autre guitare complètement atonale apparait clairement à partir du second couplet. Or est quand à lui une belle surprise. L'accompagnement instrumental de ce morceau n'est quasiment composé que de la batterie tribale de Steve Shelley, avec parfois quelques fragiles notes de guitare, comme si elles étaient à la recherche d'une structure. Ce morceau se rapproche, par son style "jam session", de She Is Not Alone, du premier album éponyme. Les autres morceaux se déploient dans un style pop/rock énergique, hypnotique ou tranquille selon les moments.

Pour autant, nous sommes bien sur ici en présence d'un album de Sonic Youth, et les éléments qui ont fait la réputation sont bien présents. Ceux qui clament que dissonances, larsens et saturations ont disparu n'ont certainement pas acheté le bon album... Il n'y a qu'à écouter l'intro larsenisée et l'explosion noisy après le premier couplet de Sleepin Around pour s'en convaincre. On retrouve même une sonorité proche de la perceuse que Lee Ranaldo utilisait dans The Burning Spear dans le fond sonore de What a Waste et à d'autres endroits du disque. Dans l'ensemble, dissonances et larsens sont donc toujours là, mais en un peu plus dilué dans l'ambiance que sur les autres albums. Evitez également de vous laisser abuser par l'écoute de Reena et Incinerate que l'on trouve comme une sorte de single pour le disque, bien qu'aucun single ne soit officiellement paru: si ces deux morceaux sont très bons, ils ne sont pas vraiment représentatifs de l'atmosphère nocturne et parfois mélancolique de l'album... Jetez plutôt une oreille (c'est une expression, lachez cette scie tout de suite...) au superbe Jams Run Free, meilleur morceau de l'album à mon gout, chanté magnifiquement par une Kim Gordon qui sonne d'ailleurs à merveille sur Rather Ripped, ou au morceau de Lee Ranaldo, Rats... L'album a, comme chaque album du groupe, un son et une ambiance unique par rapport aux autres albums de l'imposante discographie de la jeunesse sonique. On peut bien sur trouver quelques points communs avec d'autres disques: Sister et Sonic Nurse pour le format pop des compositions, Goo au niveau de la basse (Kim fait son grand retour sur son instrument de prédilection et ça n'est pas pour nous déplaire), mais cet album a de nombreux éléments qui le rendent très différent de ces derniers albums. Le morceau se rapprochant le plus d'autres albums est sans conteste Pink Steam, ce qui est sans doute l'une des raisons pour lesquelles ce morceau est considéré par beaucoup comme la perle de cet album, même si je ne suis pas totalement de cet avis: il s'agit du morceau le plus long du disque, presque 7 minutes, donc seulement 1 minute 30 à peu près chanté, le reste étant un instrumental composé de nombreuses structures différentes qui devrait ravir les accrocs de A Thousand Leaves. Une excellente surprise. Turquoise Boy se situe également dans le même style - il s'agit d'ailleurs du deuxième morceau de plus de 6 minutes... -, et si le groupe y réutilise discrètement le riff de Heather Angel (A Thousand Leaves) et qu'on peut aussi y retrouver une idée déjà présente dans l'enchainement The Wonder/Hyperstation de la Trilogy de Daydream Nation, le morceau apporte assez de nouveautés pour qu'on oublie ces petits détails - qui feront cependant le bonheur de certains de ceux dont je parlais plus haut et qui ont arrêté d'écouter Sonic Youth après le tournant des années 90 ["Sonic Youth n'a plus d'idées et ne fait que recycler ses idées encore et encore", "c'était mieux avant" - attention, je ne critique absolument pas leur position...]...

Bien sur, Rather Ripped est loin d'être le meilleur disque du groupe, mais on ne peut pas non plus leur demander un Bad Moon Rising ou un EVOL à chaque fois, hein... L'important est que Sonic Youth nous livre ici entre 12 et 15 très bons morceaux (la version américaine comporte les 12 morceaux de l'album, les versions hors-USA comportent également Helen Lundeberg en bonus, la version anglaise a Helen Lundeberg et Eyeliner et enfin, la version japonaise bénéficie de ces deux derniers plus un remix "floaty" de Do You Believe In Rapture) - même si je n'accroche pas encore totalement à The Neutral -, parvient se réinventer et à retrouver un nouveau son, une nouvelle ambiance, une nouvelle fois, et en cela atteint complètement son objectif. Vivement le prochain album :-)

Note: 18/20

qui qui

Beautiful.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/12/ar...=1&oref=slogin

"Rather Ripped" (Geffen)
Sonic Youth is 25, and its 20th album appears tomorrow. You may forget that math, or you may fixate on it. What was Sonic Youth's past, in larger terms, anyway? What did the band stand for, except unorthodox guitar tunings, overtones, conceptual art, popular culture (inasmuch as it could be related to conceptual art), inside jokes, fanzines and — somewhat skeptically — rock 'n' roll?
Perhaps not having the burden of a cause made it easier for Sonic Youth to persist. Certainly it is the rare example of a hard-touring group that often appeared to be having fun: throwing its weight behind new bands with no commercial future (as well as one that did: Nirvana), singing lyrics that have occasionally been pretentious or silly, playing long jams with dissonant gobs of noise, playing new-wavey eighth-note riffs.
Everyone has a different idea of what Sonic Youth's best record is because none are in any way perfect; they all contain various failures. But "Rather Ripped" has a different level of authoritative power. It is a fully legitimate, clear and strong rock 'n' roll record in the band's own style. And it may really be the best one, though one fears that saying it out loud means the band's work is done.
Sonic Youth had its own cloistered sound, defined by its tunings, in the beginning. I remember being fully spooked by all that indirect, ugly-beautiful tonality as a teenager, seeing the band at CBGB in 1983. (The band returns there to play a sold-out show tomorrow night before starting its summer tour.) But Sonic Youth is still here because its four members said yes to so many things: no music within their reach was too goofy or too refined.
As squalid as it liked to sound, overturning standard uses for amplifiers and effects boxes — and with an interest in Cage, Reich, Wolff, Cardew and post-classical music — there was always a classic-rock band inside Sonic Youth, ever since it first got a taste of writing a strong melody. (Those melodies appeared on "Evol," in 1986.)
That classic-rock band is what you hear in a lot of "Rather Ripped," still combining its billowing and liquefying guitar sounds, but condensing and concentrating them.
Here's how it works. On "Jams Run Free," Kim Gordon finishes her psychosexual, color-field lyrics 2 minutes 10 seconds into the song. ("I love the way you move/I hope it's not too late for me/It's too good on this sea/Where the light is green.") Immediately a rhythm-section vamp locks in, and the two guitars go at each other, one playing plinky harmonic tones and one discharging broad vales of fuzz. Thirty seconds later the guitars come together to play five notes in unison and two in harmony; then they pull apart as the drums gallop toward a blastoff, which happens at 3:20, opening into another riff, in a new, hazy, beautiful territory of sound. It's over at 3:50, and wow, it is satisfying.
Ms. Gordon is the glory of this record. For so long she has made her voice breathy and plain, at the edge of losing control, like a possessed Nico. Still, she has been only half there. Over the last 10 years she has become more central — playing more guitar, too, rather than bass — and on "Rather Ripped" she does something unusual: she sings forthrightly and in tune, making "Reena," "Turquoise Boy" and "Jams Run Free" the record's best tracks.
All Sonic Youth albums end with a question mark; this one literally does. Its last track, "Or," rumbles along quietly with an acoustic guitar and no climax. It has the purposeless atmosphere of a song that could drag on for 20 minutes, but it is brought home in 3½, ending with Thurston Moore's recitation of the kind of questions he probably hears a lot: "How long is the tour?/What time you guys playing?/Where you going next?/What comes first? The music? Or the words?" BEN RATLIFF

http://www.mammothpress.com/index.ph...review&pid=788

Rather Ripped
Sonic Youth

Reviewed by: John-Michael Bond [Mon, June 12, 2006 @ 3:01:41 PM]

When you’ve made your mark on music by exploring the depths in which guitar bombast can melt both minds and ear drums, such as Sonic Youth has, the only way you can experiment is with softer tones. With that in mind, Rather Ripped contains some of the bands most poppy and accessible songs to date (seriously it sounds like Pavement at times) so for long time fans the change may be a little much at first. The songs are slow and for the most part very low key, even to the point of seeming lethargic. Rock records aren’t supposed to make you sleepy. It’s not boring, each song is beautiful, but everything sounds so laid back it relaxes you more and more as it goes along.

If you’re looking for traditional loud as hell guitar rock Sonic Youth you’ll be extremely disappointed. However as a fan of the band, this record did grow on me the more I listened to it. It’s not what I was expecting at all and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t initially disappointed. With a few weeks of listens under my belt I feel like I’ve finally digested it and have grown to except it for what it is. Rather Ripped is a fun guitar pop record, just don’t go in with pre-conceived notions of you’re going to hear.

7 out of 10
RIYL: Calla, Pavement or Sonic Youth

http://www.startribune.com/457/story/488447.html


Sonic Youth, "Rather Ripped" (Geffen)
After several years with producer/guitarist Jim O'Rourke as a fifth member, Sonic Youth has scaled back to its original lean four-piece -- fittingly, as this is the band at its most intimate. The SY love album? Well, yes, starting off with Kim Gordon breathily cooing, "You keep me coming home again," in the opening song, "Reena," perhaps the bubbliest (and non-ironically so) pop song of the band's 25-year career as an alternative pacesetter.
Of course, this is love and pop through SY's revealing lens. The former is anything but straightforward, with Gordon and fellow singers/writers Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo exploring various, often contradictory, constituents and corollaries -- security, dependence, lust, affection, friendship, obsession, infidelity, paranoia. There's even faith in "Do You Believe in Rapture?" where the end times may or may not be a metaphor for earthly love.
And there are still plenty of the band's familiar musical leaps into the void with free-floating instrumental diversions and digressions. But most striking is the abundance of catchy melodies, smartly and effectively handled - not by the limited (if expressive) singers, but by the guitars, with many songs marked by simple yet hummable leads. It almost makes you wonder what would have happened if Television and Peter Frampton had worked together. That's a compliment.
By the final song, "Or," a somber sketch of a fan or friend, the band seems drained and exhilarated. Sounds like love.
STEVE HOCHMAN, LOS ANGELES TIMES

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment...sic-columnists

SUPER SONIC. The latest example of Sonic Youth's ability to do whatever it wants exceedingly well is "Rather Ripped" (Geffen). Instead of the experimental squawks or spiky noise of recent releases, Youth's latest is gorgeous and pop-leaning, as Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore take turns weaving their hypnotic vocals and languid guitar riffs into dreamy rock songs, including the sweet, simple "Do You Believe in Rapture" and the epic "Turquoise Boy," which runs from quiet to loud and back again.

("Rather Ripped," in stores today; grade: B+.)

http://www.411mania.com/music/album_reviews/41446

I’m going to say the title means ‘mostly drunk’ because that might help you when listening to this.

Release date: June 13th 2006
Label: DGC Records
Recorded: Sear Studio in New York-late 2005 to early 2006
Engineer: TJ Doherty
Mix Engineer: John Agnello

Total Disc Running Time: 51 minutes and 53 seconds

Personnel:

Thurston Moore-guitars and vocals
Lee Ranaldo-guitars, vocals and organ
Kim Gordon-bass, guitar and vocals
Steve Shelley-drums

Sonic Youth has been around since the early eighties. They took a lot of cues from punk and the underground rock scene. This led them to be tossed in with new wave, but they always had more of a darker edge. Then in the early nineties they were poised somewhere between grunge and alternative rock, but really got weird with the experimentation. If anything, Sonic Youth carries on the tradition of musical experimentation and raw grit of The Velvet Underground and other hardcore pre-punk acts.

Their last album was a welcome return to a more accessible mainstream sound, but it was rich in pop culture irony and esoteric postmodernism. This release seems to be less winking and could even be viewed as a toss off as it's the last album needed to fulfill their contract with Geffen Records. Two elements to note is that Jim O'Rourke has left the band and equipment that was stolen from the group in 1999 was returned to them in late 2005 and were used in this recording.

Track Listing

1) Reena

Good opener that is the core of Sonic Youth. It seems simple and disjointed in lyrics and musical arrangement, but it's really multi-layered. The layering of the guitars speaks of how far they've come from their punk roots while the driving beat shows that they are still loyal to it. The track has overall great musicianship with Shelley letting loose on the drums during the bridge.

2) Incinerate

Peppy musicianship hides the dark tale of a man who waits for the firemen to come while he burns his girlfriend. Whether this is literal doesn't really matter. The same layered sound and driving beat as the first is present here, this track might be a hair slower. Surprisingly catchy.

3) Do You Believe in Rapture?

A very interesting track. The sing-song organ and use of white noise is inventive and perfectly matches Moore's hollow vocals in a skewered examination of Christianity. It's definitely not a candidate for single status.

4) Sleepin' Around

It's classic Sonic Youth anti-social commentary to follow a song exploring religion with one touting the glory of promiscuous sex. A little too much reverb is evident on the bridge, but it then drops into some nice driving guitar work.

5) What a Waste

We smartly change things up with Gordon taking lead vocals. Dissidence and white noise is again played with in the background. This song is a weird mish-mash of death metal and Avril Lavigne styled teenie bopper angst. Hell, Gordon's vocal performance and the truer punk sound of this track is what Lavigne wishes she were.

6) Jams Run Free

A disjointed mess, but that's the point. This song demonstrates what happens when you don't tightly reel in the sound they've demonstrated on the other tracks. Sounds and chords mash into each other and not in the best of ways. The lyrics are just placeholders. As the title points out this is just a jam for the group that was probably too free to be included on a professional studio release.

7) Rats

An intriguing, gritty jazz vibe leaks into this track. This is evident in the bass and keyboard work. It's a welcome change up from the previous tracks, but all the songs on the disc are still structured the same way. One of the more coherent lyrically the story is of a woman who ‘rats' out on her boyfriend. Or so I'm guessing.

8) Turqoise Boy

Nice opener as the chords have a circular movement to them and not the straight ahead drive of the other tracks. The vocals and musicianship is also more low key. Three quarters into the disc this track serves as a nice palate cleanser. Just when you think it's a little too wimpy the guitar line beefs up to send the song home. I would probably term this as my favorite track.

9) Lights Out

A sparse, tinny sound and vocals a millions miles away and filled with angst give this an early grunge sound. Dare I use the word ‘filler' for a Sonic Youth album, but this song just laid there for me.

10) The Neutral

A great track with clever lines. It's about how one being banal and ‘neutral' is the "perfect sin." The character being sung about is not a dreamer, entertainer, cowboy, poet, nothing. He's neutral and within that vexing and hard to define, yet sad and worthless at the same time.

11) Pink Steam

The last track bleeds into this one as we get a five minute solid jam that segues from the last song to this one before the vocals kick in. This gives the piece a certain energy. Once again good drum and guitar work are the highlight.

12) Or

A great closing track. It's slow and introspective. It chastises the current music scene with its focus on money and sexuality when most of the artists don't have a clue as to what is going on. Perhaps you can take this as giving Geffen records the finger as they exit.



Final Score: 7.0