Sonic Youth
Sonic Nurse
(Geffen)
New York’s favourite noise-makers return to a sonic palette that has already yielded two superb albums, New York Ghosts and Flowers and Murray Street. So why does Sonic Nurse feel lacking? Sure, it’s very good and there are many blissful moments—Thurston’s groovy “New Hampshire” and Lee Renaldo’s “Paper Cup Exit”—but Sonic Nurse feels like the band has settled in a pattern, somewhat content with its place, without the tension and dissent that we have come to expect in its music.
—Dave Hayden
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2007.