[review 2006: the best of the year]

The opening strains of “Reena” sound strange to me. The Sonic Youth albums I’ve grown up with—which is to say the tail end of Sonic Youth’s career, beginning with A Thousand Leaves—either start with glorious blasts of noise (”Pattern Recognition,” “Contre Le Sexisme”) or relaxed, languorous noodling (”Free City Rhymes” and, to a certain extent, “The Empty Page”). “Reena” is neither of these things; it’s a propulsive track that nevertheless manages to sound a bit mellow. The overwhelming sense is one of warmth and openness, which is certainly a change of pace.

It’s a theme that runs through Rather Ripped, the band’s twentieth album for anyone still keeping count. Despite the presence of “Sleeping Around” and “What A Waste,” two of the album’s rowdier numbers, the general atmosphere is quieter and less overtly aggressive than most of Sonic Youth’s recent catalog. This is especially evident in the songs where Kim Gordon fronts the band; for a couple of years the running joke was that Kim Gordon songs were the wilfully annoying rants you skipped past to get to the good bits, but nearly every Gordon song on Rather Ripped is exactly the opposite: dreamy, peaceful numbers that represent some of the album’s best work. “Turquoise Boy” is one of the few songs that stretches well past the four minute mark—another Rather Ripped theme is brevity—but as an epic, most of the song falls into the tranquil category rather than the dissonant category. There’s just enough noise to remind you that Sonic Youth still recognize the value of distortion, and then it’s back to crisp, clean tones and Gordon’s reassuring vocals. “The Neutral” goes one further; it’s one of the sweetest songs I’ve ever heard from Sonic Youth.

But perhaps the best masterpiece on the album is “Incinerate,” an effortlessly perfect song that seems to combine the best tendencies of the past few albums and beyond. It’s Sonic Youth at its most carefree, the closest thing on the album to pure bliss. That it essentially rejects the epic structures of my favourite Sonic Youth material makes “Incinerate” that much better; tightly written three-minute songs are not Sonic Youth’s forté, and yet here’s an entire album of decent-to-amazing specimens, with “Incinerate” sitting atop the heap.

The band are beginning to enter their fifties; in a couple more years they’ll start to cross over into Rolling Stone territory. But it’s hard to imagine Sonic Youth playing “Bull in the Heather” and “Kool Thing” to crowds of physicians and lawyers in their old age, more corporate entity than rock band. It’s thanks to albums like Rather Ripped that the mere idea of Sonic Youth as anything other than a vital creative force never gains much traction. Already you can see the touchstones for the next progression—the hushed tones of “Or,” the soft guitar tones of “The Neutral,” all pointing towards a more tranquil, relaxed Sonic Youth. Now that they’ve apparently decided to tone down the lengthy jams and the explosions of noise, what’s next?