Murray Street

Ten months ago, as producer and newish Youth Jim O’Rourke slept in their recording studio, an engine - previously belonging to one of the two planes which felled the Twin Towers – landed with an almighty smash directly outside Sonic Youth’s front door. Once you know this, it’s impossible to listen to this record – in particular the accelerating Godspeed You, Black Emperor!-ish turbojet roar of ‘Rain On Tin’ – and hear anything else.

It’s a happy irony, then, that Murray Street – Sonic Youth’s 16th LP, the second in their local-history trilogy following on from 2000’s NYC Ghosts & Flowers – blooms with a directness and melodicism unheard in their music for years.

‘Karen Revisited’, its beginning run through with shards of feedback, its close a gentle murk of reverb, is, if you strip these away, a pop song so fine you could sing it on an acoustic guitar. ‘Sympathy For The Strawberry’ is the Youth as Stereolab’s guitar-propelled Manhattan cousin; and the aforementioned ‘Rain On Tin’, its tunefulness turning unexpectedly black halfway through, is mesmerising.

Is Murray Street the art-borne-of-trauma cliché getting its truth validated, or just another great NYC record? Either way, as Thurston Moore sings on ‘Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style’ – a homage to New Yorkers past and present and the album’s strong, proud, life-affirming linchpin - “From dust to dust/They create rock and roll”.