Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Monday Thurston

NY in SF

3 Aug 2009: Sonic Youth

3 August 2009
Sonic Youth
The Independent
628 Divisadero St (btwn Hayes & Grove) [Map


Thanks to Koshi, we were able to snag 4 of the 500 tickets that sold out within 2 minutes of going on sale. Writing a coherent review of this show can be done using two words: fucking awesome.


San Francisco's Sic Alps opened and, while they weren't horrible, they also weren't that interesting. All three band members took a turn at the drums, but even the changing instruments wasn't sufficient to keep me from wanting them to go away so Sonic Youth could come on sooner.


So yes, Sonic Youth. Fucking awesome. I will add that every single member of the band—including former Pavement bassist Mike Ibold, now a full-fledged band member—shreds. Kim's body looks amazing, Thurston still looks like a really tall teenager, and Lee Ranaldo is still doing sick spacey shit with his guitar. Most of the tracks they played were from the new album, The Eternal, but they did play "Silver Rocket" from Daydream Nation, which blew the doors off the place. They did not play "Teenage Riot" so alas, we have yet to redeem ourselves for missing it when they played Daydream Nation start to finish in Berkeley. I wish they'd played more old stuff. Stephen Malkmus made me believe it possible. Oh well.