Matador

So what did you think we all loved Sonic Youth strictly for the noise?

That may be partially true for some. But for many more of us who grew up with these icons of New York underground rock, it was as much about the songs themselves as the walls of feedback that cushioned them. And in the 35 years they’ve been an entity (emeritus or otherwise), there is no hiding who was the McCartney of the SY songwriting camp.

If you ever want to blame anyone for elevating that band above their roots in the Lower Manhattan art ghetto, pin it on Thurston Moore—a man as capable of keeping the music on the bleeding edge of auditory collapse as he is writing a contender for pop song of the year (they did come close in ’92 with “100%”).

And on The Best Day, he crafts a work on par with the greatest aspects of both worlds. The album art, comprised of beautiful vintage photos of Moore’s parents including a gorgeous shot of his mom on the front cover, suggests a more sentimental journey than we are used to hearing from the eternally young 56-year-old. Indeed, you can sense something like it on 11-minute-long “Forevermore”, as lovely and tempestuous a song as Moore has written since “Ono Soul” from his acclaimed 1995 artist debut Psychic Hearts. But all the same, this nine track set contains some of the guitarist’s most serious electric whirlwinds of his non-experimental solo output, most notably the last two tracks “Grace Lake” and “Germs Burn”, a pair of instrumentals that showcase the full-blown fury of his new outfit, comprised of Chrome Hoof/Guapo guitarist James Sedwards, My Bloody Valentine bassist Debbie Googe and his longtime brother-in-arms Steve Shelley on drums.

Sonic Youth may have been a casualty of the indie rock divorce heard ‘round the world. But as The Best Day indicates, recovering from the wreckage has only helped make the artistry of its former intrepid leader all the more powerful both in song and in sound.