Sonic Youth Gossip - The Four Secrets Of Sonic Youth

THE FOUR SECRETS OF SONIC YOUTH

CARL WILSON

Sonic Youth began a quarter-century ago as a steel-wool-rough New York conceptual-punk band and went on to become gatekeepers of the "alternative rock" breakthrough a decade later. Tuesday night, they appeared at Kool Haus in Toronto touring their 15th and latest album, Rather Ripped, a taut, summery recap of their many virtues. Now mostly pushing 50 -- or, in the case of singer-bassist and feminist-rock icon Kim Gordon (at left), 53 -- how does a band with an ever-more-ironic name avoid becoming a bloated dinosaur, like sixties and seventies rockers before them?
Going by Tuesday's gig, here are four lessons from the Sonic Youth Guide to Aging Gracefully.
TUNE IN, HANG OUT
As in, stay engaged with new music, but don't imitate it. One of Sonic Youth's key roles has been as mentors to bands half their age. Gordon's husband, guitarist Thurston Moore, in particular has become a big-brother figure, bringing left-field artists to broader attention. Curating their own tour-opening acts has been one vehicle. Here it was U.K. soul-pop-rap band the Go! Team, a multicultural, multigenre cheer squad who bring an almost overbearingly positive vibe to their high-energy sets. Not the most challenging pick (compared with Japanese psych-noise collective the Boredoms or, once upon a time, Nirvana) but still a galvanizing start that lent a glittery contrast to SY's play in the fields of negation.
OPEN WITH YOUR ENCORE
The crowd (which ran from Gordon's own age down to the wonder years) screamed as the band launched head-on into the sprung-string textures of one of its most enduring anthems, 1988's Teenage Riot. Just a couple of tunes later came the same era's Eric's Trip. With a couple of classics accounted for, they could concentrate on new songs -- and prove how well Rather Ripped's Do You Believe In Rapture or Incinerate stand up along early favourites such as Catholic Block -- without the pressure of fan frustration.
UNDO YOUR HABITS
This is a band whose core image is as a four-piece sound engine. They trade off on vocals (everyone but drummer Steve Shelley writes and sings), but pivot on the voluminous machinery of harmonics and dissonances between Moore's, Gordon's and Lee Ranaldo's famously detuned and customized strings: There were about two dozen guitars on hand Tuesday night. But now they're messing with the formula. Adding Mark Ibold (formerly of Pavement) as second bassist freed up Gordon to sing her songs unencumbered. She was able to whirl and pogo, liberating her inner sixties girl-group star as well as her inner Patti Smith, and turned her usual sardonic vocal turns into much more dynamic games of crowd interplay.
STAY GOLD, PONY BOY
No amount of refreshment can dispel the countercultural, political, poetic and sound-sculpting enthusiasms that fire Sonic Youth. The amplifier-shorting overtone jams were more concise than in some spacier periods, but they were fervent and frequent, juicing up even flatter new songs such as Pink Steam and Sleepin' Around. And to prove the point, the two encores included a double shot of songs from the very first SY full-length, Confusion Is Sex. After Ranaldo thanked Toronto for "one of my favourite shows this summer," Gordon -- arms stretching toward the roof, smoke and flames projected behind her -- theatrically transformed 1982's harrowing Shaking Hell (the monologue of a rapist) into an evangelizing empowerment sermon. She sent a purged but not-quite-sated crowd back into the night with the blessings of a band that clearly has no best-before date.
Sonic Youth plays the Osheaga Festival in Montreal on Sept. 2.