It's hard to believe that Sonic Youth has been making music for three decades.

They've out-lived all the labels -- alternative, grunge, post-punk, New Wave, No Wave, permanent wave, whatever -- and what they created was a sound distinctly all their own. Sonic Wave, maybe?

As a band they haven't evolved so much as they've advanced. Their sound was always sort of based on power chords, distortion, feedback and, as time went on, songs that meandered through a thicket of guitar fuzz for several minutes before returning to their original themes. Their 2004 opus, "Murray Street," showed how they could put the fuzz at 11 and still make a coherent, highly listenable (if you're willing to forgive the demon-shriek feedback and extreme length of "Karen Revisited") album.

For the most part, you're not going to dance to Sonic Youth, but you're going to be riveted even by the most cacophonous guitar duels between guitarists Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo.

What is remarkable, though, is that with their new album, "Rather Ripped," Sonic Youth has put together an album that sounds as fresh as when founding members Moore, Ranaldo and bassist Kim all really were youths. "Rather Ripped" is a testament to how a really good band can age gracefully, maintaining its unique sound and relevance even as time and musical styles march on.

The sound is roughly the same -- heavy guitars, almost incidental lyrics and driving rhythms -- but with "Rather Ripped" the sound is more of a controlled burn than an all-out wildfire. They've pared the length of the songs, and in the process they've created a highly listenable album.

Only two songs on "Rather Ripped" - the lovely, almost ethereal "Turquoise Boy" and the harmonic, ominous "Pink Stream," whose lyrics don't start until five minutes in -- are longer than six minutes. The rest are under four or five minutes -- perfect for radio play or mix discs. Even "Jams Run Free," which you might think would be a time-eating free jam, clocks in at less than four minutes (although it includes some thin, barely tolerable and barely on-key vocals by someone who sounds like Gordon).

Not that the band has sold out to commercialism. Listen to the roaring crescendo of "Turquoise Boy" and you'll know it's the same old Sonic Youth. And while it's a cliché to refer to albums like this as "accessible," it seems they're reaching out to a new audience even as they go back to the sound of their breakthrough 1988 album "Daydream Nation."

Their stuff still sounds edgy enough to make it seem as if they're daring radio program directors to give them airplay. "Rather Ripped" deserves mainstream attention, even though cutting edge bands risk losing their hip credentials when their stuff is playing on commercial radio. And "Rather Ripped" shows Sonic Youth is still cutting edge, which says as much about their creative staying power as it does about the current state of music.

At times, on numbers like "What a Waste," Sonic Youth's "Rather Ripped" incarnation sounds like a deranged Stereolab. At others, such as with the hooky openers, "Reena," and "Incinerate," they sound as if they're going for their first hit single on the pop charts. Yet there's still a sense of noisy danger that makes them sound like the offspring of feedback king and sometime patron Neil Young had to lock in the attic.

Still, while "Rather Ripped" doesn't really break any new ground for the band, it proves that they can still sound as new as they did in the 1980s, and certainly are a far cry from the distilled, overly polished corporate punk being foisted on this generation of America's youth. But that doesn't mean they've gone mainstream. Rather, it just shows that they have not lost touch with their inner youth.

3 comments about this article. Post a comment / write a review.

Recent Talkbacks ...

Posted by OMCreader on Aug. 17, 2006 at 11:28 a.m. (report)

Jacko said: This ablum blows. They should just stick to playing all of their good stuff over and over(pre-1990).

Posted by OMCreader on Aug. 17, 2006 at 11:24 a.m. (report)

I agree w/ Sorry said: You could have at least put out the review before they played in MKE a couple weeks ago...

Posted by OMCreader on Aug. 17, 2006 at 10:45 a.m. (report)

Sorry said: The album came out in June. This review is superfluous.