`We’ll know where when we get there,” sang guitarist Lee Ranaldo midway through Sonic Youth’s weekend concert at the Riviera. And for much of the set, the pioneering noise-rock quartet sounded in no particular hurry to get anywhere fast. Instead a new batch of 10-minute songs luxuriated in the ride.
Once the music of Ranaldo, Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon and Steve Shelley embodied mayhem, as screwdrivers made the guitar strings shriek, and violence splattered the songs like so much Lower East Side graffiti. But on the band’s latest album, “A Thousand Leaves,” an autumnal pensiveness prevails. The guitars still sound knotty and dissonant, but the volume level is considerably lower as the epic songs twist gently round the bends.
Which is not to imply that Sonic Youth has gone soft. On the contrary, the foursome’s 90-minute performance–save for the final encore–consisted of challenging new material, which emphasized abstract beauty at the expense of readily grasped melodies.
On “Hoarfrost,” the guitars intertwined like the shadows of leafless tree limbs. On “Hits of Sunshine,” wah-wah pedals gave the guitars a weightless delicacy. For “Karen Koltrane,” one of many songs performed without a bass as Gordon joined Moore and Ranaldo on guitar, the six-string instruments chirped like birds silhouetted on a wire.
Moore in particular captured the mood with his bucolic reveries on “Wildflower Soul” and “Sunday.” Now that the band members have become mentors and role models for a new generation of indie-rockers, perhaps these were fitting testimonials to middle-age lives focused on cocooning and child-rearing.
But then how to explain Gordon and the splatter-movie sound of “Female Mechanic on Duty,” “The Ineffable Me,” and “Heather Angel?” These smeared gore on Sonic Youth’s picture window, an indelicate reminder of an unruly past.
That past was brought screaming back to life with a reprise of “Death Valley ’69.” The song–a first-person account of the Manson murders–suggests great rock is only a step or two removed from chaos.
The band’s new music is far more subtle than that grand, grotesque gesture from more than a decade ago. Chaos has given way to anxiety. Unlike many of their peers–bands still plugging away after 18 years–Sonic Youth remains in love with the search: “We’ll know where when we get there.”
Opening was another veteran outfit, Amsterdam’s the Ex, whose spastic grooves, dissonant guitars and charming energy–how about that kitchenware solo?–suggested its punk-rock zeal has only improved with age.
Local table-top guitar maestro Kevin Drumm also performed with a trio, which demonstrated the dramatic possibilities inherent in a drone with a slowly cresting 20-minute performance.
