..there's nothing worse than progressive rock without the talent.

with the talent

...of Sonic Youth. Critical adulation out of all proportion to what's on offer. Tonight's showing hasn't changed my mind.

Oh good. That means you'll be asleep before they assault your aural sensibilities. Was there ever a greater example of 'the emperor's new clothes' syndrome in music? I've had the misfortune of suffering through their live show twice, and did a phone interview, 'conference style', in which they were rude, indifferent and so far up their own orifices that anything they said was totally incomprehensible, yet they all found each utterance entirely absorbing and meaningful. At the time, I put it down to them building up an 'aura' of rock mystique, but having never encountered anything quite as appalling since (Wendy James maybe, Iggy Pop, maybe - but he had a reason...)I now know it was just arrogance and a symptom of misguidedly believing they had something important to add to the world of music. And maybe the first track of 'Daydream Nation' has some merit...

for Anti-rock !!

Mystique is the only true currency for us all !!

always was always shall be.....

to Mrs Path. (I have last years "Rather Ripped", which is, well, just about OK, first track or 2, anyway) Girl with a uke quite sweet in a Bic Runga way. Taj bloody Mahal? Only caught the tail end of him, wondering who the aged fella playing blues guitar on the banjo was, liking it much. Fell off my seat when they said who he was, being not a bit resembling the chap on my old "best of". He seems to have aged, um, somewhat differently from Ry Cooder.......

But I loved them.And aged better than Depeche Mode..

and will look at it later. Will admit freely to liking Sonic Youth, thought they looked pretty good on the Tuesday edition, Thurston is looking very good for his age. Yes they haven't progressed sound wise over the years, but they have produced enough greta albums to justify their existance

There was me thinking this was one of the few places on the internets where both the tyranny of, er, youth and the witless canard that 'rock'n'roll is a young man's game' routinely got short shrift. It appears not.

I have no strong feelings about Sonic Youth one way or another, to be perfectly honest. Although I like the odd record of theirs, I wouldn't call myself a fan. Matter of fact, they often strike me as the sort of outfit where the idea is often better than the execution. Nevertheless, I've always found something to admire about the way in which they set out to avoid so many of the obvious reference points and so much of the innate conservatism of their immediate peers. Whatever you may think of them, they're at least attempting to stay interesting/interested. The other day, I got into a row with someone who accused them of ripping off Last Exit. When I pointed out to this person that Last Exit were formed five years after Sonic Youth made their first record, and therefore his "as Oasis are to the Beatles" comparison didn't stand up, he changed tack and claimed they were guilty of watering down free jazz and avant-garde noise, in a cynical attempt to make such forms commercially palatable for a mass audience. I'm going to pause for a second and let you turn that one over, while I try to calculate the exact number of international multi-million sellers the Art Ensemble of Chicago have racked up since Sonic Youth came on the scene.

And heaven forfend that they, or indeed anyone else, should commit the cardinal sin of being (gasp!) old. Personally, I wish to Christ there were at least a few current bands whose combined age was around the same as Sonic Youth's rhythm section who were doing anything at all that wasn't either artfully contrived hippy-dippy psych-folk, rehashed post-punk, Heritage Indie, or sub-sub-Oasis alehouse music. As far as I can hear, there aren't any, and I defy all of you with your "grandparent" jibes to come up with significant proof to the contrary. I can therefore only conclude that the much-vaunted vitality of Young People, upon which the continuing relevance of rock music is supposedly dependent, relies largely upon - hey, how about that! - copying old people. There's a reason why bands like Kings of Leon, Editors and the Killers fill stadiums and sell millions of records, while Sonic Youth go from album to album with little discernible difference to their public profile, and it has nothing to do with arrogance, incomprehensibility or old age. It's also the same reason why 95% of all current rock music holds absolutely no interest for me whatsoever - because it's piss-boring, predictable, unimaginative and I've heard it done better a hundred times a long long time ago. Your mileage may vary.

Should a few young tyros happen along with enough smarts to take Sonic Youth's ball, or at least some of their guiding principles, and run with it, that might change. I'm not going to bet the house on it. In the meantime, rather a few more ageing NY artrockers than an endless parade of clods like Brandon Flowers, whose recently-stated ambition of "knocking Nirvana and Led Zeppelin off their perch" appears to be based upon a "Cheesy Peas" style combination of Duran Duran and Springsteen at their least remarkable. Great.

They're still the best in the business. Dischordent madness never did anyone any harm. I can't wait for the new album in June.

Tuneless, formless, artwank New York poseurs?
Yeah, I'll second that.

Particularly 'Teenage Riot'. Check out 'Daydream Nation'. Plenty of tunes. You might like it!
Bob Dylan rules too by the way.

- best thing on the show I thought.

Had Jools on in the background. Daydream Nation the only SY I own. They were playing new songs with which I am not yet familiar, so i was watching with only mild interest. I'd had Teen Age Riot in my head the whole day, and had thought how good it would be if they played that very song, to show "the kids" on Jools how it was done. Not hopeful though; presumed it would be all new material. Wasn't paying much attention when suddenly...

I hear the opening chords to the aforementioned Teen Age Nation! I sit up to attention, and proceed to watch with a hearty grin across my face. And they played it great!

And incidentally, I am myself a member of "the yoof", at 17 years of age. And I couldn't have cared less that Sonic Youth were considerably older than me. Do you suppose they should drop their guitars and spend the rest of their lives working in Sainsbury's, or a bank, the moment they hit 30, or whatever other age is deemed the cut-off point for musicians? At least they're still producing new material of interest.

Albums which i loved when i was about 20 and re purchased on CD. i think the Bands name says it all ( the youth part...). they seem to have lost everything that compelled me to like them and i justified my interest to my other half in the past tense.they were bad...sadly.

Masonic Youth?

..not neccessarily in the right order.

IMO, would you rather Travis on Later?

and I must admit to sharing a view already expressed by some that they're given far too much critical benefit-of-the-doubt, but this thread has highlighted one of the few niggles I have about the massive. Their fear of noise.
I know that this isn't The Wire, but I would like an occasional foray into the merits of John Zorn or Derek Bailey. Metal also seems to get pretty short shrift, but as anyone who's seen SUNNO}} ( or however it's written) will testify, the sheer physicality of their sound is stunning.
People do carp on about how crap/ copyist a lot of modern music is but if you're only looking under the same bedclothes, you'll only find the same bodies..if that makes sense?

I do take the occasional foray into the world of noise Grant. Several years ago I went to see Whitehouse live, and have got to say it was a terrific experience, unlike anything I had seen before, and since. They have made the transition from 'dodgy industrialists' to favourites of the 'art' crowd quite succesfully, hell they even won the approval of Wire magazine eventually.

My listening habits are primarily of the general rock/pop variety, but there are periods when I just have to dig out some Einsturzende Neubauten, Whitehouse, Throbbing Gristle, Coil etc, it's almost like a cleansing of the musical pallette. Have tried to listen to various types of black/prog metal over the years, Mastodon, Opeth, Mayhem, Burzum, Tool etc, some of which is really good and blasts the cobwebs away, some of which is dreadful, cannot get past the corpse paint thing and the gutteral vocal howl.

My interest has however been peaked by Sunn o)), whom i've heard nothing by, but sound interesting. They seem to be getting excellent write ups all round, anyone can recommend a particular starting point? Steven O'Malley it seems to be the main man for this particular type of music, one of these rennaisance type who have their fingers in loads of pies and are incredibly productive!

I will always be on the look out for new 'noise' music to check out, some of which I will listen to once and file away, some which will become regular favourites, and will always support someone like Sonic Youth, yes they may be occasionally pretentious, yes they may be willfully miserable buggers at times, yes they may be hard to like, but give me them and their like, over the formulaic, paint-by-numbers indie twaddle that the UK has been producing over the years

but i prefer to despise dull indie!

Yes, wonderful noise! More of this on the site please. Or perhaps a cover feature for Fuck Buttons?

along with the new album from The Manics, is the best "used to be interesting but then went a bit predictable and dull and no one seemed to care about them for a while but now they've done this and do you know what, it really is a very good piece of work and easily stands up against their best" album of the year, so far.

Or doesn't. Saw a place to bury strangers a couple of weeks back, who reminded me of a cross between My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth - yes that good. Thought the Youth were miles ahead of the usual tokenistic/patronising twaddle that normally passes for guests on the loathsome Holland's show, and good to see that they can still get people's backs up.

...and pretty good for a "rock" band in their 50s I reckon.

And I'd wholeheartedly recommend Thurston Moore's solo album "Trees Outside The Academy" from 2007. A whole bunch of great songs on there, mostly acoustic.

Even Mrs Resting Place thinks it's "lovely".

..how come certain rock critics (..and the acolytes of said people) only accept arty pretension when it is musically inept?
As soon as an artistic sensibilty is married to a bit of musical know-how, those artists are dismissed as exhibiting "proggy" leanings.
Give me Hatfield And The North any old day.

..(I don't get it)

I'd never knowingly heard a Sonic Youth song all the way through (unless you count their GBH on Into The Groove), but I wasn't expecting much from seeing them on Later. Well, we certainly learned that Kim Gordon should never be allowed near a microphone; but other than that I thought they were terrific. My expectations were so lowered from reading about their supposed musical ineptitude that I was expecting them not to know which way round to hold their guitars. Actually they played as well as they needed to, and with far more energy than I was expecting - not because of their age, which is of course entirely irrelevant, but because of their reputation as couldn't-give-a-shit slackers. Drummer definitely knew what he was doing. I enjoyed Depeche Mode too. Dave Gahan has aged unbelievably well given what he's put his body through, and his voice was always distinctive and dark.

The big disappointment was Taj Mahal. Sorry, he was as dull as ditchwater, and Jools's boogie-woogie-by-numbers only made it worse. Raphael Saadiq? Great style, zero substance. Like watching a Motown pastiche act with a singer who can barely carry a tune. Priscilla Ahn was lovely - and pretty plucky to do a song so unadorned.

Sonic Youth performed four songs in total. "What We Know" on the short Tuesday edit and then three other songs were shown on the extended version.