Average Metacritic score 80 (34 reviews):
http://www.cokemachineglow.com/reviews/ ... d2006.html
Sonic Youth
Rather Ripped (Geffen)
US Release date: 13 June 2006
Rating: 85
On a number of levels that have directly to do with temporally-based events and environments, the continued output of Sonic Youth makes a tremendous amount of sense. One might argue that legacy ensured, seminal status secure, any band should reasonably apply some brakes, look back, heave a sigh of satisfaction, and avoid a risk of discoloring an idyll of past accomplishment with the latter-day smog of comebacks. Or one might reasonably fret that a band shouldn’t risk failing the perpetual litmus test of originality that they’ve passed so many times before.
But it should hardly bear mentioning: Sonic Youth, since, at the latest, Murray Street, is a cool creative engine operating on its own terms. Other bands operate with reference to their surrounding milieu, their New York. Sonic Youth have reached the level where New York operates within Sonic Youth.
And continued output, in the midst of the over-saturation that characterizes an Internet-centered music environment, is from a practical vantage point the best way to insure that legacy. An old fogey can trumpet the olden days to his last wheeze, but the kids are busy buzzing from one blinking hype-light to another. What Rather Ripped accomplishes, like the Youth’s last couple of albums, is to register, in current output, better production, and profound skill, the band’s deep-running musical presence. It has the hooks to catch those kids in mid-rush and keep them still and attentive for a bit, maybe even to encourage them to do what the grandpas can’t shut up about: scour a back catalogue.
Simultaneously, Rather Ripped supplies a different shade of satisfaction to the old followers: a distinctly pop slant. “Reena” is a machine of honed pop efficiency, wasting no time on a predictable build-up; it begins straightaway with two separate hooks. As a model for the pervading sense of conciseness that keeps Rather Ripped steadily ticking off sweet nuggets of indie rock, it’s immaculate. Here, conciseness is not identical with being rushed; the quintet takes its time to build-up to a chugging bridge, and let the song spiral out into a fantastic coda. “Incinerate” moves with similar fluid determination, marking out territory for hooks and melody alike, even for some controlled weaponized squalls. For those Youth fans yearning for extended explorative jams, the majority of these sub-4:30 tracks may suggest missed chances for development, but to bemoan their lack of length would be to overlook precisely how deep they are in even in brevity.
Explicitly, “Jams Run Free” makes a joke out of the band’s older tendencies by clocking in at hardly four minutes, but it’s not a flippant joke in the least. Over a propulsive rhythm, the Youth sculpt two consecutive passages – one focusing on distortion, the other on patient, clean, and breathtaking build – which play at lucrative contrasts that would have been obscured by overextension with any less discipline. And when our heroes do delve back into their cozy feedback territory, they do it with panache and unpredictable focus. Rarely have their extended noise workouts revolved around a bass line so strikingly as on “Rats,” which rings shredding noise around a steadily beating rhythm. The jams are delectable for limited usage (there are only two) and sequencing (in the second half, separated by two great pop numbers). But more importantly, they actually sound ambitious, which indeed proved to be something of a sticking point on Sonic Nurse. “Turquoise Boy,” for all my lauding of the bands more concise efforts, is arguably the best of the bunch here at over 7 minutes – but even it sounds shorter than it actually is thanks to its brilliant structure. Instead of laboring on repetitive refrains, smartly sequenced passages emphasize (first) clean mellow playing, (second) meditative, tension-building crescendos, (third) noise, and ultimately (fourth) a combination of all of those tactics. Not a second is wasted; its depth and determination makes it seem thrillingly brief. You’ll want to go back to its marvelous descending layered chord progression over and over. (But it really does sound like Kim Gordon – who by the way has her heftiest presence on this of any SY album I can remember – is saying “dickless boy.” Which is disturbing initially.)
Rather Ripped finally cements its completeness as a record with one left-field success: “Do You Believe in Rapture,” which balances a tenuous vocal melody over a two chord alternation, between which oceans of noise ominously navigate. Eventually it swells into a gorgeously harmonious bridge which takes on such heavenly tones as a function of its contrast with the pernicious frailty of its surrounding structure. As a concept it’s fantastically executed, couching questions of belief in beds of uncertain noise at the same time as it non-vocally suggests transcendence with its wordless middle.
As for the other strengths of the album, they are precisely what one would expect from an insanely accomplished band wielding the might of three ridiculously talented guitarists. “Pink Steam” is a textbook example of how to slice and dice manifold planes of tension via guitar texture, rhythms, and techniques while folding all that virtuosity into an actual song. Perhaps more unexpectedly, the rhythm sections are more ambitious. And most strikingly of all, Kim Gordon can’t be held responsible for a single dud here.
Rather Ripped is a far mellower album than many the Youth have recorded, and for that, it will doubtless have a number of its critics clumsily misbranding it as stagnant or settled. On first or second impression such a reaction is reasonable. But if you listen to fantastic album closer “Or,” and manage to miss its marvelous tweaking navigating between murky beats on the third or fourth go-round, or would prefer to shut your ears and shout at the top of your lungs, then you will certainly miss out on Rather Ripped’s various remarkable merits. It’s only average if your attention is cursory.
At any rate, Sonic Youth don’t have any proving to do. Generations of acts after them will connect with the various indie rock touchstones for which the Youth were responsible when they were, you know, young. So yes, Rather Ripped isn’t an album from a hungry group trying to create a legacy, and it’s not going to slam down the door. But those are rather niggling reasons to miss out on a quietly brilliant album like Rather Ripped. Get excited about those new legends-to-be, but potential doesn’t have anything on this kind of accomplishment so late in the game.
Amir Nezar
June 15, 2006
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