Rather Ripped

Beneath the no wave squiggles and cacophony, we’ve always sensed their innate grasp of musical architecture, but damn it if this millennium’s Sonic Youth isn’t downright poptastic. Continuing the radio rock party started on Murray Street and Sonic Nurse – largely, methinks, a Moore driven innovation – these most distinguished and long-serving art-noiseniks now sound closer to The Ronettes than Glenn Branca (particularly on tracks like ‘Reena’ and ‘Do You Believe In Rapture?'). Even Kim is with the programme. ‘Turquoise Boy’, is a delightful six-minute trip featuring Lady Gordon at her most hypnotic and Birkenesque.
Though considerably less daunting than certain earlier Youth incarnations, there’s little sense that they’ve mellowed out with age. A dim-witted rock would still recognise Rather Ripped as music from the good people who brought you the lordly mud bath of Daydream Nation, the glue-sniffing giddiness of Goo, the slow throbbing space out of A Thousand Leaves.
No, the pleasing shapeliness of Rather Ripped and its two predecessors is very much a case of the honeysuckle embracing the thorn. Those screwdrivered sounds, though cleaner and leaner, still lurk in the mix. The album still feels as if it might have been recorded in a garage with a drug factory behind the paint cans. The lyrics, as ever, bring ridicule and disquietude in equal measure. ‘Oh’, an airgun assault on banality, might be a sketch by Harold Pinter. (“How long’s the tour?” sings Thurston, “What time you guys playing?/What comes first? The music or the words?”)
25 years on and they still sound like the future of rock 'n’ roll. We’re just not worthy.