Sonic Youth
NYC Ghosts & Flowers (Geffen)
The ghosts in the title of the latest Sonic Youth album emerge repeatedly throughout the album’s eight songs, literally and lyrically. There are other ghosts as well, however — ghosts of the many approaches the band has adopted in nearly 20 years of history. The opening notes hearken back to the tinkling glass sounds of their debut EP, the whirlpool guitar crescendo in “Renegade Princess” is reminiscent of the more transcendent moments of Daydream Nation, and their emblematic swarm-of-locusts sound finds its way into the sculpture. The album, like its predecessor A Thousand Leaves, is more art than rock. Spoken poetry occasionally substitutes for singing, and the songs are more landscapes of sound than songs in the conventional sense. While the two real masterpieces on the album, “Small Flowers Crack Concrete” and “StreamXSonic Subway,” are more lateral than forward moves toward innovation, they’re still undeniably innovative when judged against the rest of pop music circa 2000. At this stage of their careers, they’re not likely to win more converts. For those already converted, however, this is a band that can absolutely do no wrong. As they settle into middle age, it’s unlikely they’ll ever generate the impure pop of Goo and Dirty again, but it’s evident, on first listen, that they’ve grown old gracefully. And upon multiple listens, the album reveals enough ghosts of enough sounds to stand as a document of how far they’ve come as well as where they are right now.
This article appears in July 14 • 2000.