It's a sun-soaked, mesmeric July's eve, and all around are swarms of pill-poppin', air-fisting, hip-swinging, beer-swigging loveable types. They're lost in a frenzied mess of summer-soakage and stomping beats. Illuminating the skies are the kind of strobe lights that should come with a public-health warning, This is The Chemical Brothers, and this was about to make a lasting impression on a naive, impressionable young man. Not that I was there to lose myself in a hedonistic haze of euphoria, mind. I traveled the long voyage to take in a band that supplied the soundtrack to my later teenage years. Bizarrely enough, it wasn't an act that would have me sauntering into the collective mass of bodies grabbing at my glow-stick and bouncing on in. It was Sonic Youth, the noisy pioneers of experimental rock. And nosily rocked, they did. Quite magnificently, I might add.
And so to the release of "Rather Ripped," the last in a long line of Geffen offerings, described as an album of "rockers and ballads" by lead singer, Thurston Moore. With the impetus for experimental noise still as frequent as ever, The Youth produce again. Such is their style, this is music suited to the best of dreams and worst of nightmares. They've grown older, but the exuberance is brimming wonderfully as ever before. The band that so many tried to be, but never even came close, the godfathers of art-rock; cut them open and they'll ooze cool. And they ooze their entrails all over this. "You keep me coming home again" sings Gordon on the album's opener "Reena", with a voice that wouldn't sound out of place for a girl 30 years her senior. And they do keep us coming home. It's a chirpy introduction, taking in the distinct melodic pang SY uniquely carved out for themselves all those years ago, still sounding as fresh and aloof as always.
We carry on in the same vein with "Incinerate," -Thurston on vocals this time- "You doused my soul in gasoline, You flicked a match into my brain". Following the conformity is suicide ethos, SY, as always, conjure up another arsenic attack on the conventional with devastating nihilistic aplomb. As always, the contorted and the serene blend quite beautifully, the rapidity and fuzz intertwines with the slow, soft whispers and gentle breeze of melody. The album's first single "Do You Believe In Rapture" could have nestled cosily into "Washing Machine", with it's soothing lull of atmospheric undertones and distant bashing of symbols. "Pink Steam" is classic SY, trudging slowly to a jagged riff. Succinctly suave in its dynamism, distinctly eerie in its swerving approach, it lies as the albums best track.
The dissonant spits of feedback and gobs of frenetic noise are set in motion throughout, exemplified by the heavily-distorted sleepy "Rats"- Ranaldo, as always, illuminating the "city streets" and "fractured sunshine" longingly in a splendid marriage of desperation and cracked noise. "The Neutral" blends Gordon's soft tones with wavy melody, her presence, as always, an unwavering essence of infinite cool. "Jams Run Free" follows in similar vein with its saunter from pop precision to noisy nether-regions. Each new song a shooting of explosive jet-streams of distortion fused swagger-riffs, eerie ghost-narratives and
rock in its finest form.
In their 28th year, it's somewhat baffling to gauge the fact that they're still blitzing their way through the musical landscapes with the same ferociousness and guile that set them on their way all those years ago. The music is still as experimentalist as ever; a quite incredible achievement, given their astronomical back-catalogue. The rear-guard is old, matured and well-traveled, but the tunes are frenetically original, the live-shows still a frenzied collaboration of sheer-mayhem and bliss. One wonders if they'll ever grow old. Indeed, it's Gordon who quite aptly sings "You are a legend in a lovely game" on Turquoise Blue. I'll leave it at that.
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