Sonic Youth

Sonic Youth’s music is quite similar to one specific Richard Prince painting decorating the latest album. The painting shows a nurse whose mouth glows red through the surgical facemask. Whether one decides her mouth is bleeding or merely lipstick is an ambiguity I am sure the band intended. Sonic Youth has always wanted the mystery to be there beneath the unorthodoxly tuned chiming guitars and cascading distortion resembling a massive swarm of bees. After 20 years, the group is still pushing the limiting boundaries of what your friends and neighbors define as a song. Sonic Nurse shoves the pretty and clean tones to the forefront, with atmospheric noise mixed just below. It’s mellower than its predecessors but also Sonic Youth’s most political album since Dirty, with allusions to our president as a crime boss (“Peace Attack”) and Lee Renaldo’s strangely beautiful “Paper Cup Exit,” which eerily warns “It’s later than you think/ Time every one came clean.” Sonic Nurse is a great place for the curious to start and essential for those following Sonic Youth’s mesmerizing metamorphosis.