30 years into their career, Sonic Youth aren’t necessarily innovators anymore, but what they are making is leagues beyond what you would expect from most groups who’ve been around so long: despite the typically confounding lyrics (“Elastic dreams of vicious actions/Plastic stomachs wrapped in steel”?) the songs on The Eternal are tightly and engagingly structured in their use of both noise and melody, never meandering, and most of the time just flat out rocking the shit. (See “Sacred Trickster”, “Antenna”, signature epic “Massage the History”, and the Lou Reed homaging “Poison Arrow”)

8.3 / 10

Matador Records
June 9, 2009