Sonic Youth

Stay in Brooklyn 2011

Silver Present

Nov 13, 2023
Net Unique

By Ian Rushbury

Stay in Brooklyn 2011 makes its debut as a bodily launch after its first look as a part of a bunch of dwell recordings that appeared on Sonic Youth’s Bandcamp web page. That may be a reasonably inauspicious technique to doc the ultimate U.S. present carried out by considered one of America’s most necessary and influential bands. Fortuitously, the Silver Present label has righted that incorrect and now those that like to really maintain music of their palms can get the recording on vinyl and CD.

Did the band know that this was going to be the final throw of the cube? Most likely, because the 17-song set neatly covers the bands 30 yr run because the archetypal U.S. alt rock guitar band. Followers will argue for months concerning the tracklisting, bemoaning the dearth of this, that or the opposite, however what’s on Stay in Brooklyn 2011 is all fairly nice. And for a band that appears to get pushed into the avant garde nook by one and all there are many tunes scattered all through the report. Some you possibly can dance to. Some you possibly can’t, however it might be enjoyable to strive.

1988’s Daydream Nation yields the aural throat punch of “Eric’s Journey” and it nonetheless sounds as thrilling because it did when Reagan was in energy. Elsewhere you get golden oldies within the form of “Flower” and “Dying Valley 69,” which rub towards their quite unlikely UK High 30 single “Sugar Kane.” In different phrases, when you like your Sonic Youth noisy and unfettered or barely extra refined, it’s all right here.

Stay in Brooklyn 2011 is a good swansong with the bandmembers dragging all their pent up emotions of frustration, loathing, and mistrust with one another onto the stage and playfully tearing all of it to shreds. The band did a handful of festivals in South America just a few months later, however by then, the band was spent. At simply the suitable time, they caught lightning in a bottle, and right here it’s. (www.sonicyouth.com)

Creator score: 8/10