CD reviews

Sonic Youth

The Eternal
(Matador)
8.1

Goes well with: desert road trips

When you’ve been around for almost 30 years, there aren’t many milestones left to conquer. But with their 15th studio album, Sonic Youth show that they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

The Eternal marks their return to an indie label and the addition of a fifth member: bass player Mark Ibold, formerly of Pavement, who’s been touring with the band since 2006. Sonic Youth’s dirty little secret? They’ve been a jam band since Kim Gordon switched to electric guitar in the mid ’90s, but Ibold’s bass lines lend a muscular presence to the avant-garde tunings and eclectic arrangements.

Gordon fans will be stoked to hear that eight of the 12 tracks on this hour-long offering feature her vocals. Though Sonic Youth were never punk, per se, their best work is rooted in proto- and post-punk sound, which makes the hopped-up blues-rock in Thurston Moore’s “Thunderclap to Bobby Pyn”—a reference to Darby Crash’s glam-rock alias—all the more hilarious.

Sonic Youth have spent decades exploring rock’s extremes. The Eternal signifies a bold and provocative shift toward the middle ground between the raucous and the ethereal.

The Field

Yesterday and Today

(Kompakt)
7.7

Goes well with Gui Boratto, Ulrich Schnauss, Sascha Funke

It’s been said more than once that a musician has a lifetime to incubate a first album and maybe 18 months to draft a follow-up. And for an electronic artist, there’s the obligation to fill downtime with remixes of other people’s opuses.
The sophomore try is even more daunting if you’re Axel Willner, aka The Field, and your first full-length was From Here We Go Sublime, 2007’s widely praised cruise through cloudbanks of trance, shoegaze and house. It cemented The Field as a major player and provided the jewel in Kompakt’s minimal techno crown.

On Yesterday and Today, Willner neither abandons nor surmounts the breezy heights that made his debut so special; instead, he strips down his formula. Before, he relied on a breathy Christine McVie snippet to evoke fleet-footed bliss, but now, he takes us there more naturally, leaving the propulsion to his arpeggiated wind-tunnel synths, low-wattage drum loops (plus guest beats from Battles’ drummer John Stanier) and far-off chimes and tubular bells. The resulting highlights, “Leave It” and “The More I Do,” are certainly less startling but far more granular than the songs from his last LP. Like a flock of birds that seems like a solid entity when viewed at a distance, Yesterday and Today is a thousand downy patterns coalescing into a beautiful structure.

The Field play Wednesday, June 3, at The Casbah.

The Oranges Band

Are Invisible
(Self-Released)
7.9

Goes well with: Spoon, Smoking Popes, Ted Leo

Is The Oranges Band invisible? It’s kinda tough to argue to the contrary. The group’s been slogging along as an opening act ever since ex-Spoon bassist Roman Kuebler started the band in 2000. Meantime, they haven’t exactly become a household name.

And while Are Invisible is a strong set of songs, it’s not really strong enough to compete with the likes of Spoon, The Shins and The New Pornographers. It’s good—at times great—but still short of spectacular, even if standouts like the clever “Gordon’s Nightclub” and the XTC-leaning pop attack of “When Your Mask is Your Revealing Feature” are catchy in their own right.

In fact, the best aspects of this release seem to be in its riskier tracks. “Absolutely Instru(mental),” a seven-minute-plus instrumental, starts off sounding like post-punk along the lines of Mission of Burma before gently cascading into a mellow spaghetti-western-tinged finale. It’s a great tune and a worthy showcase of the band’s songwriting talent. Plus, the addition of late-era Guided by Voices lead guitarist Doug Gillard certainly doesn’t hurt.
Perhaps more risks next time around will free this band of its cursed invisibility. And, guys—lose the “orange” moniker. That color leads nowhere. See: Oranger.