Murray Street [Enhanced]

Standout tracks for me are Lee's excellent 'Karen Revisited', which touches on psychedelia and has an excellent breakdown at the end, managing to sound both disturbing and beautiful at the same time. Also a standout is the Kim-song, 'Sympathy For The Strawberry', which shows us a different style of her music (harking back to maybe Evol's 'Shadow of a Doubt'). This contrasts nicely with her more punky 'Plastic Sun' earlier on the album. 'Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style' penned by Thurston is also excellent, along with the all of the tracks really.

All in all I think this is one of their most coherent albums and one I would recommend to both Youth and non-Youth fans alike.

"The Empty Page" is another classic Thurston Moore album opener, and it just gets better from there. "Karen Revisited" is a particular highlight, best Lee Ranaldo since "Rain King"? Jim O'Rourke appears to have added an extra dimension with production and extra guitars. Check out the guitars on "Plastic Sun", pure class. Roll on the Summer tour..

It has been said that SY are no longer relevant, that their risks are no longer risks. They only play for their own sonic pleasure. Maybe thats true, but just listen to Murry Street and then stick on Is This It and ask yourself which is more relevant. Which will leave you drained and bored, which will want you asking for more, more, more????!!!!! Sonic Youth are as important as any band around at the moment, they have been for the past two decades. Forget The Strokes, Sonic Youth are THE quintessential New York band. They'll still be making great music when The Strokes, BRMC, Hives, etc, etc are long gone.

Go and get Murry Street now!!!

Song by song:
1. Empty Page: melodious in a 'Sister' style, but including 15 years experience and a beat that'll have you tapping your feet.

2. Disconnection Notice: melodious again, with great mesa-stabs of echo guitar and a glorious guitar-as-modem feedback outro. Wouldn't be out of place on 'A Thousand Leaves.'

3. Rain On Tin: starts weak, three Thurston vocals in a row is a little too much. Get past the vocals and you're rewarded with a lovely sonic workout akin to the quieter parts of 'The Diamond Sea.'

4. Karen Revisited: As ever, Lee provides a consistant level of quality. An awkward start leads into a rocker that could have appeared on 'Daydream Nation' and then descends into pure noise in a manner not dissimilar to Lee's song 'Mote' from 'Goo.'

5.Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style: The stand-out track track on the album, this rocks, screams, experiments and bewitches all at once. Twin horns play Coltrane-style sheets of sound in tandem with the Youth's furious guitar assault. Stunning.

6. Plastic Sun: Kim Gordon's tracks are either (a) amazing or (b) terrible. This is pretty bad, but nowhere near as bad as 'Lightnin'" from the last album. No experimenting, and bad lyrics, this may have been good if sung by Kurt Cobain 10 years ago, but has no place in the SY canon beyond being a B-side.

7. Sympathy For The Strawberry: This sounds unfinished, a sonic jam that would have been on one of the SYR 'snapshot' EP's and then a year later appearing as a finished song on an album. The second weakest song on the album, it is redeemed slightly by Kim's whispered vocals which recall 'Contre Le Sexisme' from 'A Thousand Leaves' and her whispered, multi-layered songs on 'Dirty.'

Looking at the album as a whole, it doesn't hit the heights of 'A Thousand Leaves' or 'Sister' or 'Confusion Is Sex/Kill Yr Idols,' but neither does it fail as 'Bad Moon Rising' did. It ranks somewhere around 'Washing Machine' and 'Evol' - encroaching on brilliant but let down by a few weak tracks.

Don't let the number of songs worry you either, this pulls in at 45 minutes, with one track going over 11 mins so plenty of trademark sonic explorations for long-term fans, and a lot of pretty riffs and melody in the first few songs, making this album the closest SY have come to being radio friendly in about a decade.

Whether the album as a whole will stand up as more than just a bunch of songs (which is where 2000's 'NYC G+F' fell down) will only become clear over time, but it's always good to see the Youth progressing along their own parallel path to popular culture. Recommended for fans of SY or experimental music like Godspeed You Black Emperor! or Mogwai. Straight Rock fans, try Dirty first.