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After 17 years, the veteran alternative band Sonic Youth seem permanently forbidding to some, tediously familiar to others. Yet though their 11th album, A Thousand Leaves (DGC), bears the sonic imprint of their unique tunings and does rock out at times, it's a welcoming change--a fulfilled but never complacent meditation on the raveups of their early days filtered through the tunecraft of their early-'90s albums and the ambient experiments of the techno generation.
"I've been with lots of boys and they've screwed me up," declares Sarge's Elizabeth Elmore on the opening track of The Glass Intact (Mud). Whereupon she proceeds to lay out a few of the many varieties of screwed-up experience--each one distinctly individual, each one strangely recognizable. Guys who can't stand it when real girls do this might try practicing to these rockin', well-crafted tunes. It'll be easy--just read along.
Playboy, May 1998
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Apr. 1998 | June 1998 |  |