Sonic Youth keep crowd pleased with turbulent set
By JENNA DUNCAN
Get Out
July 22, 2004

When Sonic Youth took the stage at the Marquee Theatre on Wednesday, their somewhat haggard appearances did not convey the raw, noisy vigor that they were about to unleash.

Gray-haired guitarist Lee Ranaldo emerged first, followed by scraggly, slightly round drummer Steve Shelley and lanky lead man Thurston Moore, clad in a faded black T-shirt with his signature messy mop of hair.

But those fans familiar with the New York City trio's body of dissonant space rock knew what to expect.

Rebecca Tennery, 31, a sales representative from Phoenix, said she has been listening to Sonic Youth for 15 years and expected them to be as sharp as they were two decades ago.

“I don’t think I’ll be disappointed at all,” Tennery said.

Her husband, Todd Tennery, 35, in advertising sales, agreed.

“They stay true to their roots – they don’t ever change,” he said, citing Moore’s songwriting as a strength and describing Sonic Youth’s sound as “distortion, distortion, distortion.”

Sonic Youth opened the set with Gordon’s raspy wails on “I Love You, Golden Blue,” from the recently released “Sonic Nurse” album. They plunged through tunes plucked from their 19-album catalog, including the crowd-pleaser “Bull in the Heather” and a reconstructed version of “Schizophrenia” from their 1994 release “Sister.” However, much to the crowd’s enthusiasm, most selections were less than five years old.

“I missed that early wave,” said financial advisor Aaron Lowe, 27, of Tempe, referring to releases of the mid-1990s. He said he has been considering buying “Corporate Ghost,” a DVD compilation of Sonic Youth videos created since the release of the “Goo” album (1991).

“I’ve seen live videos of them. There was a lot of ethereal, really good rock,” he said.

Visually, Sonic Youth lived up to their tradition of supplying a graphically stimulating stage. Reminiscent of the large globular light fixtures featured in their 1995 Lollapalooza tour, several lighted boxes held slides illuminating paintings of nurses from their latest album cover art. The slides alternated between the nurse slides, white light and slides of guitars made to look like they were X-rayed.

While the band may no longer look like a formidable gang of fashionable rock youngsters, their reverberations were only quieted after a wailing, cantankerous encore.

“(Sonic Youth’s sound) is very much stripped down to what the essence of rock and roll is about,” said Rebecca Tennery.