Editorial Reviews
A Thousand Leaves
Music Review:
Music Review
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Amazon.com
The ageless Sonic Youth return with a new, yet familiar, excursion into their own particular brand of ultra-amplified, dissonant rock. The quartet's CD A Thousand Leaves evokes fond memories of yesteryear's noisy, now-classic, avant-garde approach, while retaining snippets of traditional pop elements heard on several of their previous major-label releases. As Sonic Youth's music has gained a larger audience, they've preserved doses of the crunched melody and meandering structure that has always been their trademark. The new release sounds relatively unabashed, with wandering songs like "Female Mechanic Now on Duty" spewing extended barrages of feedback and Kim Gordon's dry, unsettling scowls at the listener. Look deeper, however, and there's a quiet resonance among the racket, with tracks like "Sunday" and "Snare, Girl" making use of Thurston Moore's cooler vocal tone and jagged, cascading guitar passages. --Matthew Cooke
Spin
The title of Sonic Youth's tenth album, A Thousand Leaves, betrays the reflective autumnal feel of the music. Kim Gordon has never sounded less demure and more riot grrrl angry than she does here.... [W]hat really keeps A Thousand Leaves vital is the continually inventive fretboard effects of Moore and Lee Ranaldo.... [Sonic Youth have not] outdone themselves here ... but they certainly have done themselves justice. Sonic Youth ... [is] still here because even when they're reaching within... read more