Sonic Youth, The Destroyed Room (Geffen)

Ok, so Sonic Youth could release an album of them just dicking about, and I’d still buy it (what’s that you say?  They did?  And it was called Goodbye 20th Century?  Oh, I have that).  So an album of Geffen era b-sides and rare gubbins, surprisingly heavily weighted towards the more recent end of that period, is easily limber enough to shimmy under my quality control bar, despite all those creaking joints.

After the disappointingly insubstantial Rather Ripped, I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed The Destroyed Room (what’s that you say?  I am telling you?  And this is me doing it?  Oh, I didn’t realise).   From the minute the unmistakeable chordings of “Fire Engine” run off the edge of the road with siren ablaze, I’m hooked, right until the very end of the “Diamond Sea”’s twenty five minutes of guitar scrub.  Even if the latter doesn’t differ all that much from the original version of Washing Machine (trivia: released on my first day wasting my life working in a record shop) for the first quarter of an hour.  Hell, I can even forgive the minute’s worth of fluffy Kim-goes-country of “Razor Blade”, and the bleepy farts of “Campfire”, if it means getting a consistently interesting and diverse seventy minute SY record.

They are at a fascinating point in their career now.  They have parted company with Jim O’Rourke and with Geffen.  They are involved with more side projects than ever, and I sometimes get the feeling they enjoy those a whole lot more (e.g all Thurston’s free improv shenanigans).  If they could recharge or reboot or rewire or whatever it is that avant-rock types need to do, and come back with a new direction, or guitar tuning, or something, anything different, there is still a chance they could become quite popular, this lot (what’s that you say?  etc etc etc).

Listen to the ace “Beautiful Plateau” here.
You can buy it here too, if you like.