Muristek
(Three Lobed Recordings)Largely unheard, mostly instrumental rarities from the alt-rock band’s final decade offer flashes of their chemistry
Sonic Youth’s 2011 split after the acrimonious divorce of key members Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore means a reunion is unlikely. Many will be grateful, then, for these remaining scraps from the alt-rock lynchpins’ table.
Consisting of five largely unheard, mostly instrumental rarities from the band’s last 10 years, In/Out/In isn’t a “new” album by any means so much as tracks that remained underdeveloped or unfinished at the time. Two – In & Out and Out & In, recorded a decade apart – have been released physically before. The former, recorded in a soundcheck, is a Neu!-like groove with Gordon contributing gently hypnotic vocal mantras. The 12-minute latter starts as a driving groove with walls of guitars and suddenly shifts gear into an infectious hook. The shorter, punchier Machine hails from 2008 but harks back to their late 1980s/early 90s vintage, presumably losing out to stronger ideas for the final album, The Eternal. Social Static, a challenging soundtrack to Chris Habib and Spencer Tunick’s Super-8 film of the same title, finds them at their most dissonant, sculpting with distortion.
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