Sonic Youth / SYR 1 by C. Max Magee courtesy SYR Listening to Sonic Youth's SYR 1, one encounters an incongruity which unfolds as follows. On one hand, the four tracks on this EP will not be considered by most to be music, at least not in any sort of conventional sense. On the other hand, there is still something to be gained from listening to it. What is gained is completely different, however, from the pleasure afforded to a listener by the melody and story of a song by The Wallflowers or any number of other bands you hear on the radio. SYR 1 creates a different experience altogether. It's not music that tells you how the band feels, or what they like or dislike, or who mmmbopped whom; it is a collage of sounds that beckons the listener to think, instead of the song revealing itself outright. This is a path Sonic Youth has been traveling down more or less unhindered since their formation. Recently, especially since Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star and on through Washing Machine, they have become more and more experimental, endeavoring perhaps to expand the definition of music in a musical world that has become increasingly sectioned off and labeled. Today, every band must fall within an easily-defined category, offering no confusion to the listener nor difficulty to the critic. Meanwhile, Sonic Youth has been destroying not only the boundaries of their category, punk rock or alternative, but the boundaries of music itself. Granted, this sort of display will garner very little time on the stereo at a party or on the playlist at a radio station; in the end, however, the four tracks on this understated disk do have something to offer. The question is whether you or I have the interest or the patience to look for it. So, what exactly is Sonic Youth offering us? Surging deeper into the world of avant-garde rock, Thurston and friends created an EP entirely without vocals. A molding together of subtle, methodical guitar pieces, distant yet intense drum beats, and noise, noise, noise. There are quivering, pulsating static, insistent beeps, and any number of instruments and sounds played backwards or otherwise distorted with studio effects. The result is a layered composition sometimes dense, sometimes eerily thin, sometimes melodious, but usually diffuse. A mood is definitely set by the four tracks, all of which seem to be slight variations on each other. It is the sort of album that would be the perfect soundtrack for the sudden clarity of sobriety after weeks of barely-recalled bingeing or for the naked, weightless freedom and anxiety one feels when alone and broke in a huge city. SYR 1 demands to be listened to with a clear head; distraction makes it very difficult to get any sort of impression from the disc. In the end, Sonic Youth's latest is kind of like reading a philosophy textbook, not extremely enjoyable, but certain to get you thinking one way or another.

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