New Sonic Youth - "Sacred Trickster"
Sonic Youth recently road tested some of The Eternal in South America and since then have been working on a bunch of projects that actually have nothing to do with their much-anticipated Matador debut. Thurston Moore curated one of Spencer Sweeney & Stereogum's Santa's Sessions and laid down guitar and vocals on Jemina Pearl's new album. He and the rest of SY then hooked up with John Paul Jones to score Nearly Ninety, a new production from legendary choreographer Merce Cunningham. Their energy remains eternal.
Kim's "What's it like to be a girl in a band?/ I don't quite understand/ That's so quaint to hear/ I feel so faint, my dear" is one of a handful of memorable lines from the possibly black metal influenced "Sacred Trickster." As promised, it also delivers "heavy ass weirdo hooks." Here's Matador's setup:
"Sacred Trickster" is a 2:10 out-of-the gate hardcore matinee track with Kim singing salutes to French painter Yves Klein and Western Massachusetts noise artist Noise Nomads. It sets the tone for The Eternal, which comprises twelve tunes that are a fireworks display of Sonic Youth touchstones. From the primal no wave attack of its earliest days, to the radical chording and song structures of its '90s period, to the more focused and contemporary explorations of the last five years. This their 16th album, and their first for the Matador label, consolidates their move to a more lush, sensual sound as displayed on last album Rather Ripped - but if anything punchier and cleaner, and now backstopped by the addition of Mark Ibold (Pavement, Dustdevils) on bass.
Sonic Youth - "Sacred Trickster" (MP3)
But wait, there's more! The band plays a (no longer) secret show in London next week (tickets on sale tomorrow AM) and have just been confirmed for the MBV-curated ATP Nightmare Before Christmas. Those outside of England should stay tuned for an imminent US summer tour announcement, but we know it will include a stop at NY's No Fun Fest 5/16.
The Eternal is out 6/9 on Matador and comes with lots of goodies as part of the label's Buy Early Get Now series.
YouTube has this helpful recap for the Merce Cunningham gig at BAM, which is great since we're not a dance blog (yet).
Posted at 10:51 AM by Scott in MP3, Video
Tags: Jemina Pearl | John Paul Jones | Merce Cunningham | Sonic Youth
The intro is promising, and this is the best Kim has sounded in years. A good teaser, but will the album be epic?
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It better be! *shakes fist*
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i dunno if this band (one of my favorite) sucks these days. am i totally depressed?or...
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really mediocre
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I'm digging the new direction of the band. It's like they've taken their more recent work and put a lot of extra energy behind it.
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good stuff, see you guys monday!!
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I'm not too sure about this new stuff, though I never know how much I'm going to eventually like any given Sonic Youth record until I've heard it at least five or six times. All my favorite Sonic Youth stuff is based around otherworldly headfuck guitar sounds, with the vocals taking second stage to the wall of beautiful noise. I never thought that Sonic Youth had very good results when they made a concerted effort to write "catchy" vocal-centric songs based on regular guitar lines during the Goo and DIrty era, and it seems like they've been trying to revisit that period lately. That's just my personal taste though... a lot of people love that early 90s era of the band.
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My main problem with albums like Goo and Rather Ripped was that they don't have all that much cool guitar noise, which for me has always been the band's main attraction. I'm hoping that the rest of the new record isn't as straightforward as this track. It would be cool if they'd take this punk rock energy and throw in some mid song noise freakouts a-la Sister, rather than go the commercial straightforward Goo route again.
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