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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exceptional, June 30, 2009
This is one of those rare instances in which the reviewers aren't engaged in ecstatic hyperbole just because one of their long time favorite groups has come out with a new album. The opinions expressed by each and every reviewer are justified. The music requires a few listens to really appreciate what has been done, and I generally find that good music often doesn't jump out as outstanding the first time around. This is old school punk with melody, psychedelic overtones and credible lyrics. Several of the songs are reminiscent of the Stooges (with the exception of The Weirdness) and the Velvet Underground, without being in any way derivative.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
frustration and ecstasy, July 7, 2009
So I see they finally got someone who could play bass - up from that Sonic Youth tribute band - but as was the case with Pavement, I guess I just have to accept the fact that Sonic Youth are never going to get someone who brings as much to the vocals and lyrics as those boys bring to the guitars. As usual, the vocals and lyrics often make the small hairs tingle with embarrassment. This stuff would have been wretched for a junior high punk band in 1981, but now, it's just mystifying. This band has made the most challenging, the hardest rocking, the most beautiful and ecstatic music by any rock band over the past 25 years. The guitars, especially, are like nothing else in rock. You have to go outside of rock altogether to find music that has this brilliant richness of texture. So why do the lyrics often sound like my ten-year-old son when he's trying to insult one of cartoon characters he's watching? Or like the diary entries of an entitled and angry teenaged girl who really should be reading more and writing less? When I first started listening to the band 30 or so years ago I passed all this off as some species of adolescent snarky, anti-beauty abrasiveness thing - an aesthetic, mind you, that was fresh about a century ago. I assumed they would outgrow it. Over the years it became almost endearing, like the one puzzling but disturbing flaw in some otherwise amazing and beloved friend. Oh well. The music still hunts you, pins you down, and demands that you listen, really listen, and every once in a while, there's something like bliss - too rare in this noisy, stupid world.
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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rocking Out, June 9, 2009
A return to their bolder, noisier and hard rocking roots, THE ETERNAL is a nice change of direction for SY from their more subdued RATHER RIPPED (a great album in it's own right but not what I've come to love about Sonic Youth since i first discovered them in high school). I listen to SY because I want to hear some hard edged rock and in that department THE ETERNAL delivers.
Standout tracks include "Poison Arrow" which is bombastic, angry, and just plain fun to listen to, "Massage The History," which does just that as the longest and most referential to SY's past psychedelic offerings. Meandering, and a little heavy handed, but epic in its own way. In fact, the whole album seems epic, but isn't upon repeated listens. It's not exactly a case of "Mailing it in," but it certainly isn't among their best albums.
That said, SY still does enough things right that even their lesser work is still highly enjoyable, and better than most of what is being billed as 'rock' these days, Indy or otherwise. SY have always known who and what they are, and THE ETERNAL is more proof of that. A little smug perhaps, a little self indulgent, and a little self referential, but fun none-the-less.
4/5 Stars. For SY fans it is of course an obvious and immediate buy.
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