Twenty-three years into a majestically influential alt.rock career and whether they like it or not, SONIC YOUTH have become elder statespeople where this game is concerned. It's been a long, strange trip and - bar a bit of a wobble in the mid-90s after their era-defining spell from "Sister" through to "Dirty" - they've been constantly innovative and exciting.
Amazingly, "Sonic Nurse" is their 19th album, but while the shock of that statistic may have you reeling, it's the power of the music contained within that will really knock you off your feet, as "Sonic Nurse" is a fine, consistently challenging and (crucially) memorably tuneful album.
It opens with the juggernaut crush of "Pattern Recognition" and a lusty Kim Gordon imploring "heat-seeking missile freak...You're the one!". A little like a distant relation of "Drunken Butterfly" (the first of several times "Sonic Nurse" quietly references both "Dirty" and the mighty "Daydream Nation"), it's wholly impressive and even (bless 'em) slides headlong into the obligatory, feedback-swathed wig-out at the end. Good to know some things never change.
However, aside from this and the caterwauling "Kim Gordon & The Arthur Doyle Hand Cream", "Sonic Nurse" is a cool album that peddles songs every bit much as admirable guitar tunings, which - for this reviewer - is when these on-going NYC legends align and score.
There are more Thurston Moore vocals than on previous outings, but they're all great and often surprising. "Unmade Bed", for example, is almost plangent pop by ver Youth's aggressive standards, featuring heavily-damped drums and rippling, echo-ey guitars, though the customary odd tunings do poke through the lining. "Peace Attack" is also - despite being an older, wiser, grown-up cousin of "Youth Against Fascism" - meditative and really rather beautiful, even allowing for the anti-Dubya/ pro-conservation message bubbling beneath the surface.
Not that they've gone soft, mind. "New Hampshire," starts out as a creepy nag'n' thrum, but soon flexes rippling biceps and burns up with a full-on vocal from Thurston that curiously references BB King and Johhny Winter. Strange, but possessing hypnotic power, as does "Stones" where Moore and Lee Ranaldo tweak'n'strum to their hearts' content and the whole caboodle has that starsailing Krautrock punk thing Sonic Youth do like nobody else.
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Kim hardly gets left behind either. Aside from "Pattern Recognition", she weighs in with two of the best tracks in "Dude Ranch Nurse" and "I Love You Golden Blue." The former finds ratchety guitars attacking a dreamy, narcotic premise and Kim emoting unhinged, vacant stuff like "Let nurse give you a shot, it's something to do." Chilly, as is "...Golden Blue", which slides slowly in on a shimmering guitar bliss-out rather like a truncated "Diamond Sea" and reassembles as something expansive and esoteric, without sacrificing its' rock edge. Lee Ranaldo only gets the one lead vocal ("Paper Cup Exit"), but this is a fine effort too, going from slow and moody to paranoid and enervating and ultimately whipping up an awesome frenzy.
"Sonic Nurse", then, finds our enigmatic art-rock heroes very much alive and thriving. They still love No Wave, drone rock, blistering punk rock and the motorik Krautrock pulse, but have returned with the confident, tune-embracing edge that also helped shape epochal albums such as "Daydream Nation," and "Dirty." Time will tell whether this album will be bracketed with those, but at present it sounds very much like a contender. Nurse won't be required to bring the screens round just yet, thank you very much.
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