Sonic Youth are aging well. I don’t mean physically of course (although if I look as good as Kim Gordon does when I’m 56, I will die a happy woman) – I’m talking musically. With 16 albums under their belt – not to mention 25+ years in the biz, and god knows how many exhilarating and life-changing experiences – these NYC alt-rockers have successfully resisted doing the one thing that causes death to alt-rockers everywhere: going soft.
One listen to their most recent album, The Eternal, proves this – it’s chock full of crash-bang drumming, smoky vocals, dramatic crescendos and decrescendos, and haunting, moody guitars. Live, it proved equally epic, as the fivesome churned out attitude and fervor Thursday night to a packed Electric Factory crowd.
Freak-folk’s rising star Kurt Vile opened, along with his back-up band, the Violators. Over the past year, I’ve seen Vile at least a half-dozen times and each time, he gets better. A year ago, there was no way the song-writer –with a Dylan-y voice and penchant for swirling guitars – could have rocked such a large space – he was too busy starting at the floor.
But something (a contract with Matador perhaps?) seems to have imbued him with confidence as of late, and Thursday night he proved his mettle once more, upping the ante with hard-hitting power chords and emphatic vocals. The Violators matched his intensity, delivering a short set of fiery, psychedelic anthems.
Next up was LA-based The Entrance Band, who signed to Thurston Moore’s Ecstatic Peace! label earlier this year. Clad all in white – and steeped in psychedelia – the trio offered brooding, hypnotic anthems, intensified by thumping, intricate bass parts and rousing, theatrical vocals.
