[godsfavoritedog]

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/...h-the-eternal/

[dionysusundone]

This is surprisingly, probably the best review I've read so far. From Allmusic.com (4 outta 5 stars)

If anyone thought Sonic Youth were getting a little too comfortable, The Eternal proved they weren't afraid of change, even as they closed in on 30 years of making music together. The Eternal is Sonic Youth's first album for legendary indie label Matador Records after a nearly 20-year stint with Geffen Records, which dovetails nicely with the fact that this is also the band's first album with former Pavement bassist (and Matador alum) Mark Ibold. Sonic Youth even changed their usual songwriting approach, writing and recording tracks in quick batches instead of planning an entire song cycle at once. Dust wasn't allowed to settle on these songs, nor could it — the most striking thing about The Eternal is how hard it rocks. The contemplative haze that drifted over Murray Street, Sonic Nurse, and to a lesser extent Rather Ripped is blasted away by opening track "Sacred Trickster"'s lunging, massive guitars and Kim Gordon's demand to be pressed up against an amp. The rest of the band sounds revitalized, too: Lee Ranaldo's excellent "What We Know" is a furious yet complex rocker, and Thurston Moore sounds like the leader of the gang on "Thunderclap for Bobby Pyn," which name-drops the Heaven's Gate cult and the alias of Germs singer Darby Crash between its "whoa-oh" and "yeah yeah"-fueled choruses. This is the heaviest Sonic Youth have been since Sister, and it's fitting that their return to the indie world touches on their SST days. That's not the only era they revisit, however. "Poison Arrow"'s skronky grind evokes Dirty's sexier moments; "Antenna"'s radio love turns Murray Street's sun-streaked drones into epic pop; and "Calming the Snake"'s tumbling, atonal riffing suggests summery menace as much as it does Sonic Youth's no wave roots.

While there's a little bit of almost everything that has made Sonic Youth great over the years, the band hasn't put these elements together in precisely this way before. Considering how expansive their last few albums for Geffen were, The Eternal's relatively concise songs also set it apart, but when Sonic Youth do stretch out, it's with purpose. "Anti-Orgasm" begins as a duet/duel between Gordon and Moore, who trade challenges and come-ons over free-falling guitars that become a rolling, slow-motion excursion; the track's instrumental interplay is more violent, and more sensual, than its words. "Massage the History" is even more vast, encompassing fragile acoustic strumming, distortion storms, and dead calm over its nearly ten-minute expanse. While The Eternal doesn't flow quite as effortlessly as some Sonic Youth albums, it's perfectly balanced, its raw moments tempered by the subtle "Walkin Blue" and "Malibu Gas Station," which creeps so imperceptibly toward its raging guitars that they're almost unnoticed until you're caught in their undercurrent. Sonic Youth's freedom to follow their bliss is what holds The Eternal together; just as paradoxically, the changes they make on this album not only bring excitement to their music, they reaffirm just how consistently good the band has been — and continues to be — over the years.

[Moshe]

http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/5047


People seem torn about The Eternal. It’s surprising to find Sonic Youth albums ‘divisive’ at this stage in their career, just as they’ve settled into a kind of twilight wisdom. But recently there’s been some complaining about their general ‘not avant garde-ness’ and their hegemonic status in the alterna-indie world, alongside the usual hosannas thrown toward every Sonic Youth album that isn’t NYC Ghosts and Flowers (though I’ll happily argue that’s one of their most under-rated and under-explored records).

That’d be fine if Sonic Youth were stern vanguardists – but what we’re dealing with here is a rock group who actually appear most interested in keeping on being a rock group. That Sonic Youth means something, extra-musically, to a lot of people invested in the artifice and edifice of rock criticism is fine, but SY suffer the almost ignominious fate of not being allowed to be Sonic Youth in 2009: they’re always SY in relation to i.e. Daydream Nation, or the SY Geffen years, or their Juno pop-culture moment, or Starbucks Youth, or...

Perhaps The Eternal doesn’t help matters by being, ultimately, another excellent Sonic Youth album. That it’s one of their better recent efforts surely has something to do with their shift from major label purgatory to independent label ‘freedom.’ They sound rejuvenated, as though being liberated from the toil of dealing with the Geffen machine has loosened their limbs, lightened the load and returned Sonic Youth to what they do best – being Sonic Youth.

So the language of The Eternal is immediately familiar if you’ve been following Sonic Youth’s development in their third decade: guitars that tangle and buckle, lyrics that cross the obfuscatory with the observational, licks and riffs lifted from extra-curricular studies and then mangled through the group’s three-guitar circuitousness. Unlike, say, “Dripping Dream” or “Rain On Tin” from earlier this decade, Sonic Youth are now less likely to spend minutes stretching their arms and warping each other’s lines until they’ve hit the sweet spot that Television were aiming for on Marquee Moon. The Eternal is largely concise and dynamic, and even the longer songs here, like the glorious “Antenna,” are expertly measured. The closing “Massage The History” has Kim Gordon at her most eldritch and the group at their most unwound – but if you’re expecting the lengthy blowouts of recent times, you might be surprised at The Eternal’s self-editing function (“Malibu Gas Station”’s noise blowout censors itself after about fifteen seconds). And it might be a small thing, but the notable increase in multi-vocal performances here suggests a new-found comfort in each other’s company, a kind of ‘new community’ within the SY ferment.
Of course, ultimately Sonic Youth albums are never just Sonic Youth albums – or, rather, they’re never allowed to be. And I’m all for the broader context, particularly with a group as voracious and culturally complex as Sonic Youth. But I’m here to defend Sonic Youth neither from their detractors nor their admirers. The Eternal is a rock group playing at the peak of their powers: assured but not ‘comfortable,’ and free with each other. This is five people in a room, making the rock album that other ‘four guys in a room’ groups have regularly been trying – and failing – to do for a long time.

[Moshe]

http://www.chartattack.com/reviews/70776/sonic-youth-the-eternal