After a grand latter-day glory run, starting with Murray Street all the way through to Rather Ripped, the buck stops here at The Eternal with a magnificently boring, almost self-parodying effort by the esteemed NYC noize-rock maestros. Don’t buy into some factors like their departure from Geffen or anything else that may have caused the banal end results in this record. It is what it is. Even with the kind, calm reserve of giving the disc several spins to form a solid opinion, there isn’t much stirring the Kool-Aid.
They give the standard Sonic Youth fare, but unfortunately this time around it’s like a shot of Jack poured into a tall glass of water. Some minor blips on the screen are detected with cuts like Thurston and Kim’s “Anti-Orgasm” (would’ve been a better album title), “What We Know,” which harbors a groovy bass line with Lee on vocals, and the album’s closer, “Massaging The History,” a song, which clocks in, in excess of nine minutes, but is coincidently the album’s gem. It’s also the first time we’ve gotten a good album closer with Kim since “Sweet Shine” on 1994’s Experimental Jet Set, Trash And No Star. Oddly enough, that’s the last time Sonic Youth started to lose their shine.
Okay, folks, despite the fair flogging on display here, one can’t forget this is Sonic Youth. They’ve had this longevity for a reason, and it’s because this band has had a largely impressive resume with a number of ups and downs. However, the trick is having more ups than downs, and when most fans look into Sonic’s past, they certainly can attest to all the slices of fried gold in their back catalog.
|